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BURNETT    LECTURES 

1888-89 


LECTURES 


ON    THE 


RELIGION    OF    THE    SEMITES 


FIRST    SERIES 
THE    FUNDAMENTAL    INSTITUTIONS 


BY 


W.   ROBERTSON   SMITH,  M.A.,  LL.D. 

KELLOw  OF  Christ's  college,  and  professor  of  Arabic 

IN   THE   UNIVERSITY  OF  CAMBRIDGE 


NEW    YORK 
D.    APPLETON    AND    COMPANY 

1889 


PREFACE. 


In  April  1887  I  was  invited  by  the  trustees  of  the  Burnett 
Fund  to  deliver  three  courses  of  lectures  at  Aberdeen,  in 
the  three  years  from  October  1888  to  October  1891,  on 
"  The  primitive  religions  of  the  Semitic  peoples,  viewed  in 
relation  to  other  ancient  religions,  and  to  the  spiritual 
religion  of  the  Old  Testament  and  of  Christianity."  I  gladly 
accepted  this  invitation ;  for  the  subject  proposed  had 
interested  me  for  many  years,  and  it  seemed  to  me  possible 
to  treat  it  in  a  way  that  would  not  be  uninteresting  to  the 
members  of  my  old  University,  in  whose  hall  the  Burnett 
Lectures  are  delivered,  and  to  the  wider  public  to  whom 
the  gates  of  Marischal  College  are  opened  on  the  occasion. 
In  years  gone  by,  when  I  was  called  upon  to  defend 
before  the  courts  of  my  Church  the  rights  of  historical 
research,  as  applied  to  the  Old  Testament,  I  had  reason  to 
acknowledge  with  gratitude  the  fairness  and  independence 
of  judgment  which  my  fellow-townsmen  of  Aberdeen 
brought  to  the  discussion  of  questions  which  in  most 
countries  are  held  to  be  reserved  for  the  learned,  and  to 
be  merely  disturbing  to  the  piety  of  the  ordinary  layman  ; 
and  I  was  glad  to  have  the  opportunity  of  commending  to 
the  notice  of  a  public  so  impartial  and  so  intelligent  the 
study  of  a  branch  of  comparative  religion  which,  as  I 
venture  to  think,  is  indispensable  to  the  future  progress  of 
Biblical  research. 


vi  PREFACE. 


In  Scotland,  at  least,  no  words  need  be  wasted  to 
prove  that  a  right  understanding  of  the  religion  of  the 
Old  Testament  is  the  only  way  to  a  right  understanding  of 
the  Christian  faith;  but  it  is  not  so  fully  recognised, 
except  in  the  circle  of  professed  scholars,  that  the  doctrines 
and  ordinances  of  the  Old  Testament  cannot  be  thoroughly 
comprehended  until  they  are  put  into  comparison  with  the 
relig-ions  of  the  nations  akin  to  the  Israelites.  The  value 
of  comparative  studies  for  the  study  of  the  religion  of  the 
Bible  was  brought  out  very  clearly,  two  hundred  years  ago, 
by  one  of  the  greatest  of  English  theologians,  Dr.  John 
Spencer,  Master  of  Corpus  Christi  College  in  Cambridge, 
whose  Latin  work  on  the  ritual  laws  of  the  Hebrews  may 
justly  be  said  to  have  laid  the'  foundations  of  the  science 
of  Comparative  Eeligion,  and  in  its  special  subject,  in  spite 
of  certain  defects  that  could  hardly  have  been  avoided  at 
the  time  when  it  was  composed,  still  remains  by  far  the 
most  important  book  on  the  religious  antiquities  of  the 
Hebrews.  But  Spencer  was  so  much  before  his  time  that 
his  work  was  not  followed  up;  it  is  often  ignored  by 
professed  students  of  the  Old  Testament,  and  has  hardly 
exercised  any  influence  on  the  current  ideas  which  are 
the  common  property  of  educated  men  interested  in  the 
Bible. 

In  modern  times  Comparative  Eeligion  has  become  in 
some  degree  a  popular  subject,  and  in  our  own  country 
has  been  treated  from  various  points  of  view  by  men  of 
eminence  who  have  the  ear  of  the  public ;  but  nothing 
considerable  has  been  done  since  Spencer's  time,  either  in 
England  or  on  the  Continent,  whether  in  learned  or  in 
popular  form,  towards  a  systematic  comparison  of  the 
religion  of  the  Hebrews,  as  a  whole,  with  the  beliefs  and 
ritual  practices  of  the  other  Semitic  peoples.  In  matters 
of  detail  valuable  work  has  been  done ;  but  this  work  has 


PREFACE.  VH 


been  too  special,  and  for  the  most  part  too  technical,  to 
help  the  circle  to  whom  the  Burnett  Lectures  are  addressed  ; 
which  I  take  to  be  a  circle  of  cultivated  and  thinking  men 
and  women,  who  have  no  special  acquaintance  with  Semitic 
lore,  but  are  interested  in  everything  that  throws  light  on 
tlieir  own  religion,  and  are  prepared  to  follow  a  sustained 
or  even  a  severe  argument,  if  the  speaker  on  his  part  will 
remember  that  historical  research  can  always  be  made 
intelligible  to  thinking  people,  when  it  is  set  forth  with 
orderly  method  and  in  plain  language. 

There  is  a  particular  reason  why  some  attempt  in  this 
direction  should  be  made  now.  The  first  conditions  of  an 
effective  comparison  of  Hebrew  religion,  as  a  whole,  with 
the  religion  of  the  other  Semites,  were  lacking  so  long  as 
the  historical  order  of  the  Old  Testament  documents,  and 
especially  of  the  documents  of  which  the  Pentateuch  is 
made  up,  was  unascertained  or  wrongly  apprehended ; 
but,  thanks  to  the  labours  of  a  series  of  scholars  (of 
whom  it  is  sufficient  to  name  Kuenen  and  Wellhausen, 
as  the  men  whose  acumen  and  research  have  carried 
this  enquiry  to  a  point  where  nothing  of  vital  importance 
for  the  historical  study  of  the  Old  Testament  religion 
still  remains  uncertain),  the  growth  of  the  Old  Testament 
religion  can  now  be  followed  from  stage  to  stage,  in  a 
way  that  is  hardly  possible  with  any  other  religion  of 
antiquity.  And  so  it  is  now  not  only  possible,  but 
most  necessary  for  further  progress,  to  make  a  fair  com- 
parison between  Hebrew  religion  in  its  various  stages 
and  the  relicrions  of  the  races  with  which  the  Hebrews 
were  cognate  by  natural  descent,  and  with  which  also  they 
were  historically  in  constant  touch. 

The  plan  which  I  have  framed  for  my  guidance  in 
carrvin"  out  the  desires  of  the  Burnett  Trustees  is  ex- 
plained  in  the  first  lecture.      I  begin  with  the  institutions 


Vlll  PREFACE. 


of  religion,  and  in  the  present  series  I  discuss  those 
institutions  which  may  be  called  fundamental,  particularly 
that  of  sacrifice,  to  which  fully  one  half  of  the  volume 
is  devoted.  It  will  readily  be  understood  that,  in  the 
course  of  the  argument,  I  have  found  it  convenient  to 
take  up  a  good  many  things  that  are  not  fandamental,  at 
the  place  where  they  could  most  naturally  be  explained ; 
and  on  the  other  hand  I  daresay  that  students  of  the 
subject  may  sometimes  be  disposed  to  regard  as  funda- 
mental certain  matters  which  I  have  been  compelled  to 
defer.  But  on  the  whole  I  trust  that  the  present  volume 
will  be  found  to  justify  its  title,  and  to  contain  a  fairly 
adequate  analysis  of  the  first  principles  of  Semitic  worship. 
It  would  indeed  have  been  in  some  respects  more  satis- 
factory to  myself  to  defer  the  publication  of  the  first 
series  of  lectures  till  I  could  complete  the  whole  subject 
of  institutions,  derivative  as  well  as  primary.  But  it 
seemed  due  to  the  hearers  who  may  desire  to  attend  the 
second  series  of  lectures,  to  let  them  have  before  them  in 
print  the  arguments  and  conclusions  from  which  that 
series  must  start ;  and  also,  in  a  matter  of  this  sort,  when 
one  has  put  forth  a  considerable  number  of  new  ideas,  the 
value  of  which  must  be  tested  by  criticism,  one  is  anxious 
to  have  the  judgment  of  scholars  on  the  first  part  of  one's 
work  before  going  on  to  further  developments. 

I  may  explain  that  the  lectures,  as  now  printed,  are 
considerably  expanded  from  the  form  in  which  they  were 
delivered ;  and  that  only  nine  lectures  of  the  eleven  were 
read  in  Aberdeen,  the  last  two  having  been  added  to 
complete  the  discussion  of  sacrificial  ritual. 

In  dealing  with  the  nniltiplicity  of  scattered  evidences 
on  which  the  argument  rests,  I  have  derived  great  assist- 
ance from  the  researches  of  a  number  of  scholars,  to  whom 
acknowledgment    is    made    in    the    jjroper     places.       For 


PREFACE.  IX 


Arabia  I  have  been  able  to  refer  throughout  to  my  friend 
Wellhausen's  excellent  volume,  Rcstc  arabisclun  Heiden- 
thumcs  (Berl.  1887),  in  which  the  extant  material  for  this 
branch  of  Semitic  heathenism  is  fully  brought  together, 
and  criticised  with  the  author's  well-known  acumen.  For 
the  other  parts  of  Semitic  heathenism  there  is  no  standard 
exposition  of  a  systematic  kind  that  can  be  referred  to 
in  the  same  way.  In  this  country  Movers's  book  on 
Plioenician  religion  is  often  regarded  as  a  standard 
authority  for  the  heathenism  of  the  Northern  Semites ; 
but,  with  all  its  learning,  it  is  a  very  unsafe  guide,  and 
does  not  supersede  even  so  old  a  book  as  Selden,  Dc  diis 
Syris. 

In  analysing  the  origin  of  ritual  institutions  I  have 
often  had  occasion  to  consult  analogies  in  the  usages  of 
early  peoples  beyond  the  Semitic  field.  In  this  part  of 
the  work  I  have  had  invaluable  assistance  from  my  friend, 
Mr.  J.  G.  Frazer,  who  has  given  me  free  access  to  his 
unpublished  collections  on  the  superstitions  and  religious 
observances  of  primitive  nations  in  all  parts  of  the  globe. 
I  have  sometimes  referred  to  him  by  name,  in  the  course 
of  the  book,  but  these  references  convey  but  an  imperfect 
idea  of  my  obligations  to  his  learning  and  intimate 
familiarity  with  primitive  habits  of  thought.  In  this 
connection  I  would  also  desire  to  make  special  acknow- 
ledgment of  the  value,  to  students  of  Semitic  ritual  and 
usage,  of  the  comparative  studies  of  Dr.  Wilken  of  Leyden  ; 
which  I  mention  in  this  place,  because  Dutch  work  is  too 
apt  to  be  overlooked  in  England. 

In  transcribing  Oriental  words  I  have  distinguished  the 
emphatic  consonants,  so  far  as  seemed  necessary  to  preclude 
ambiguities,  by  the  usual  device  of  putting  dots  under  the 
English  letters  that  come  nearest  to  them  in  sound.  But 
instead  of  /.•  (P)  I  write  c,  following  a  precedent  set  by 


PREFACE. 


eminent  French  Orientalists.  In  Eastern  words  both  c  and 
g  are  always  to  be  pronounced  hard.  But  where  there  is 
a  conventional  English  form  for  a  word  I  retain  it ;  thus 
I  write  "  Caaba,"  not  "  Ka  ba  ;  "  "  Caliph,"  not  "  Khalifa  ;  " 
"  Jehovah,"  not  "  Yahveh  "  or  "  lahwe."  As  regards  the 
references  in  the  notes,  it  may  be  useful  to  mention  that 
C.  I.  S.  means  the  Paris  Corpus  Inscriptionum  Semiticarum, 
and  ZDMG.  the  Zeitschrift  of  the  German  Oriental  Society ; 
that  when  Wellhausen  is  cited,  without  reference  to  the 
title  of  a  book,  his  work  on  Arabian  Heathenism  is  meant ; 
and  that  Kinship  means  my  book  on  Kinship  and  Marriage 
in  Early  Arabia  (Cambridge,  University  Press,  1885). 

Finally,  I  have  to  express  my  thanks  to  my  friend,  Mr. 
J.  S.  Black,  who  has  kindly  read  the  whole  book  in  proof, 
and  made  many  valuable  suggestions. 


W.  PtOBEKTSON  Smith. 


Chkist's  College,  Cambridge, 
\st  October  1889. 


CONTENTS. 


LECTURE  I. 

PAOE 

Introduction  :  The  Subject  and  the  Method  of  Enquiry        .        1 


LECTURE  IL 

The  Nature  of  the  Religious  Community  and  the  Relation 

OF  THE  Gods  to  their  Worshippers  .  •  .29 

LECTURE  in. 

The  Relation  of  the  Gods  to  Natural  Things— Holy  Places 

—The  Jinn        ....•••      ^2 

LECTURE  IV. 
Holy  Places  in  their  Relation  to  Man   .  .  .  •     132 

LECTURE  V. 

Sanctuaries,  Natural  and  Artificial  —  Holy  Waters,  Trees, 

Caves,  and  Stones       .  .  .  .  •  .150 

LECTURE  YI. 
Sacrifice— Preliminary  Survey      .  .  •  •  •     1^6 

LECTURE  VII. 
FiESTFRUiTS,  Tithes,  and  Sacrificial  Meals        .  .  •    226 

LECTURE  VIII. 

The  Original  Significance  of  Animal  Sacrifice,  .  .    251 

u 


xii  CONTENTS. 


LECTURE  IX. 

PAGE 

The  Sackamental  Efficacy  of  Animal  Sacrifice,  and  Cognate 
Acts  of  Ritual— The  Blood  Covenant— Blood  and  Hair 
Offerings  .......     294 

LECTURE  X. 

The  Development  of  Sacrificial  Ritual— Fire-sacrifices  and 

Piacula  .......     334 

LECTURE  XL 

Sacrificial  Gifts  and  Piacular  Sacrifices— The  Special  Ideas 

involved  in  the  latter  .....     369 


Additional  Notes       .......     421 

Index  of  Passages  of  Scripture      .....     475 

General  Index  .....••     479 


LECTUKE  I. 

INTRODUCTION  :    THE    SUBJECT   AND    THE    METHOD    OF 

ENQUIRY. 

The  subject  before  us  is  the  religion  of  the  Semitic  peoples, 
that  is,  of  the  group  of  kindred  nations,  including  the  Arabs, 
the  Hebrews  and  Phoenicians,  the  Aramaeans,  the  Baby- 
lonians and  Assyrians,  which  in  ancient  times  occupied  the 
great  Arabian  Peninsula,  with  the  more  fertile  lands  of 
Syria  Mesopotamia  and  Irac,  from  the  Mediterranean 
coast  to  the  base  of  the  mountains  of  Iran  and  Armenia. 
Among  these  peoples  three  of  the  great  faiths  of  the 
world  had  their  origin,  so  that  the  Semites  must  always 
have  a  peculiar  interest  for  the  student  of  the  history  of 
religion.  Our  subject,  however,  is  not  the  history  of  the 
several  religions  that  have  a  Semitic  origin,  but  Semitic 
religion  as  a  whole  in  its  common  features  and  general 
type.  Judaism,  Christianity  and  Islam  prepositive  religions, 
that  is,  they  did  not  grow  up  like  the  systems  of  ancient 
heathenism,  under  the  action  of  unconscious  forces  operating 
silently  from  age  to  age,  but  trace  their  origin  to  the 
teaching  of  great  religious  innovators,  who  spoke  as  the 
organs  of  a  divine  revelation,  and  deliberately  departed 
from  the  traditions  of  the  past.  Behind  these  positive 
religions  lies  the  old   unconscious  religious  tradition,  the 


A 


2  POSITIVE   AND   TRADITIONAL  lect.  i. 

body  of  religious  usage  and  belief  which  cannot  be  traced 
to  the  influence  of  individual  minds,  and  was  not  propagated 
on  individual  authority,  but  formed  part  of  that  inheritance 
from  the  past  into  which  successive  generations  of  the 
Semitic  race  grew  up  as  it  were  instinctively,  taking  it  as 
a  matter  of  course  that  they  should  believe  and  act  as  their 
fathers  had  done  before  them.  The  positive  Semitic 
religions  had  to  establish  themselves  on  ground  already 
occupied  by  these  older  beliefs  and  usages ;  they  had  to 
displace  what  they  could  not  assimilate,  and  whether  they 
rejected  or  absorbed  the  elements  of  the  older  religion, 
they  had  at  every  point  to  reckon  with  them  and  take  up 
a  definite  attitude  towards  them.  No  positive  religion  that 
has  moved  men  has  been  able  to  start  with  a  tabula  rasa, 
and  express  itself  as  if  religion  were  beginning  for  the  first 
time ;  in  form,  if  not  in  substance,  the  new  system  must 
be  in  contact  all  along  the  line  with  the  older  ideas  and 
practices  which  it  finds  in  possession.  A  new  scheme  of 
faith  can  find  a  hearing  only  by  appealing  to  religious 
instincts  and  susceptibilities  that  already  exist  in  its 
audience,  and  it  cannot  reach  these  without  taking  account 
of  the  traditional  forms  in  which  all  religious  feeling  is 
embodied,  and  without  speaking  a  language  which  men 
accustomed  to  these  old  forms  can  understand.  Thus  to 
comprehend  a  system  of  positive  religion  thoroughly,  to 
understand  it  in  its  historical  origin  and  form  as  well  as  in 
its  abstract  principles,  we  must  know  the  traditional 
religion  that  preceded  it.  It  is  from  this  point  of  view 
that  I  invite  you  to  take  an  interest  in  the  ancient  religion 
of  the  Semitic  peoples  ;  the  matter  is  not  one  of  mere 
antiquarian  curiosity,  but  has  a  direct  and  important 
bearing  on  the  great  problem  of  the  origins  of  the  spiritual 
religion  of  the  Bible.  Let  me  illustrate  this  by  an  example. 
You  know  how  large  a  part  of  the  teaching  of  the  New 


LKCT.  I.  RELIGION    AMONG   THE    SEMITES.  3 

Testament  and  of  all  Christian  theology  turns  on  the  ideas 
of  sacrifice  and  priesthood.  In  what  they  have  to  say  on 
these  heads  the  New  Testament  writers  presuppose,  as  the 
basis  of  their  argument,  the  notion  of  sacrifice  and  priest- 
hood current  among  the  Jews  and  embodied  in  the 
ordinances  of  the  Temple.  But,  again,  the  ritual  of  the  \ 
Temple  was  not  in  its  origin  an  entirely  novel  thing ;  the 
precepts  of  the  Pentateuch  did  not  create  a  priesthood  and 
a  sacrificial  service  on  an  altogether  independent  basis,  but 
only  reshaped  and  remodelled,  in  accordance  with  a  more 
spiritual  doctrine,  institutions  of  an  older  type,  which  in 
many  particulars  were  common  to  the  Hebrews  with  their 
heathen  neighbours.  Every  one  who  reads  the  Old  Testa- 
ment with  attention  is  struck  with  the  fact  that  the  origin 
and  rationale  of  sacrifice  are  nowhere  fully  explained ;  that 
sacrifice  is  an  essential  part  of  religion  is  taken  for  granted, 
as  something  which  is  not  a  doctrine  peculiar  to  Israel 
but  is  universally  admitted  and  acted  on  without  as  well  as 
within  the  limits  of  the  chosen  people.  Thus  when  we  wish 
thoroughly  to  study  the  New  Testament  doctrine  of  sacrifice, 
we  are  carried  back  step  by  step  till  we  reach  a  point 
where  we  have  to  ask  what  sacrifice  meant,  not  to  the  old 
Hebrews  alone,  but  to  the  whole  circle  of  nations  of  which 
they  formed  a  part.  By  considerations  of  this  sort  we  are 
led  to  the  conclusion  that  no  one  of  the  religions  of  Semitic 
origin  which  still  exercise  so  great  an  influence  on  the  lives 
of  millions  of  mankind  can  be  studied  completely  and 
exhaustively  without  a  subsidiary  enquiry  into  the  older 
traditional  religion  of  the  Semitic  race. 

You    observe    that    in    this    argument    I    take    it    for 
granted  that,   when    we    go    back    to    the    most    ancient 
religious  conceptions  and  usages  of  the  Hebrews,  we  shall  \ 
find   them   to    be   the   common   property   of    a    group    of 
kindred  peoples,  and  not  the  exclusive  possession  of  the   i 


MEANING    OF    THE  lect.  I. 


tribes  of  Israel.  The  proof  that  this  is  so  will  appear 
more  clearly  in  the  sequel ;  hut,  indeed,  the  thing  will 
hardly  be  denied  by  any  one  who  has  read  the  Bible  with 
care.  In  the  history  of  old  Israel  before  the  captivity, 
nothing  comes  out  more  clearly  than  that  the  mass  of  the 
people  found  the  greatest  difficulty  in  keeping  their 
national  religion  distinct  from  that  of  the  surrounding 
nations.  Those  who  had  no  grasp  of  spiritual  principles, 
and  knew  the  religion  of  Jehovah  only  as  an  affair  of 
inherited  usage,  were  not  conscious  of  any  great  difference 
between  themselves  and  their  heathen  neighbours,  and  fell 
into  Canaanite  and  other  foreign  practices  with  the  greatest 
facility.  The  significance  of  this  fact  is  manifest  if  we 
consider  how  deeply  the  most  untutored  religious  sensi- 
bilities are  shocked  by  any  kind  of  innovation.  Nothing 
appeals  so  strongly  as  religion  to  the  conservative  instincts  ; 
and  conservatism  is  the  habitual  attitude  of  Orientals. 
The  whole  history  of  Israel  is  unintelligible  if  we  suppose 
that  the  heathenism  against  which  the  prophets  contended 
was  a  thing  altogether  alien  to  the  religious  traditions  of 
the  Hebrews.  In  principle  there  was  all  the  difference  in 
the  world  between  the  faith  of  Isaiah  and  that  of  an 
idolater.  But  the  difference  in  principle,  which  seems  so 
clear  to  us,  was  not  clear  to  the  average  Judeean,  and  the 
reason  of  this  was  that  it  was  obscured  by  the  great 
similarity  in  many  important  points  of  religious  tradition 
and  ritual  practice.  The  conservatism  which  refuses  to 
look  at  principles,  and  has  an  eye  only  for  tradition  and 
usage,  was  against  the  prophets,  and  had  no  sympathy 
with  their  efforts  to  draw  a  sharp  line  between  the  religion 
of  Jehovah  and  that  of  the  foreign  gods.  This  is  a  proof 
that  what  I  may  call  the  natural  basis  of  Israel's  worship 
was  very  closely  akin  to  that  of  the  neighbouring  cults. 
The  conclusion  on  this  point  which  is  suggested  by  the 


LECT.  I.  WORD    SEMITIC. 


facts  of  Old  Testament  history,  may  be  accepted  the  more 

readily  because  it  is  confirmed  by  presumptive  arguments 

of  another  kind.     Traditional  religion  is  handed  down  from 

father  to  child,  and  therefore  is  in  great  measure  an  affair 

of  race.     Nations  sprung  from  a  common  stock  will  have 

a  common  inheritance  of   traditional  belief  and  usage  in 

things  sacred  as  well  as  profane,  and   thus  the  evidence 

that  the  Hebrews  and  their  neighbours  had  a  large  common 

stock   of    religious    tradition    falls    in   with    tlie   evidence 

which  we  have  from  other  sources,  that  in  point  of  race 

the   people   of   Israel   were   nearly   akin    to    the    heathen 

nations  of    Syria   and    Arabia.      The   populations   of    this 

whole  region  constitute  a  well-marked  ethnic  unity,  a  fact 

which  is  usually  expressed  by  giving  to  them  the  common 

name  of  Semites.      The  choice  of  this  term  was  orginally 

suggested  by  the  tenth  chapter  of  Genesis,  in  which  most 

of  the  nations  of  the  group  with  which  we  are  concerned 

are  represented  as  descended  from  Shem  the  son  of  Noah. 

But    though    modern   historians    and   ethnographers   have 

borrowed  a  name  from  the  book  of  Genesis,  it  must  be 

understood  that  they  do  not  define  the  Semitic  group  as 

coextensive  with  the  list  of  nations  that  are  there  reckoned 

to   the  children   of   Shem.      Most  recent   interpreters   are 

disposed   to    regard    the    classification   of   the    famihes   of 

mankind  given   in    Genesis    x.  as   founded    on    principles 

geographical  or  political  rather  than  ethnographical;   the 

Phoenicians  and  other  Canaanites,  for  example,  are  made  to 

be  children  of  Ham  and  near   cousins  of   the  Egyptians. 

This  arrangement  corresponds  to  historical  facts,  for,  at  a 

period  anterior  to  the  Hebrew  conquest,  Canaan  was  for 

centuries  an  Egyptian  dependency,  and  Phoenician  religion 

and    civilisation    are    permeated     by    Egyptian    influence. 

]5ut  ethnographically  the  Canaanites  were  akin  to  the  Arabs 

and  Syrians,  and  they  spoke  a  language  which  is  hardly 


LANGUAGE   AS   A  lect.  i. 


different  from  Hebrew.  On  the  other  hand,  Elam  and  Lud, 
that  is,  Susiana  and  Lydia,  are  called  children  of  Shem, 
and  doubtless  these  lands  were  powerfully  influenced  by 
Semitic  civilisation,  but  there  is  no  reason  to  think  that 
in  either  country  the  mass  of  the  population  belonged  to 
the  same  stock  as  the  Syrians  and  Arabs.  Accordingly  it 
must  be  remembered  that  when  modern  scholars  use  the 
term  Semitic,  they  do  not  speak  as  interpreters  of  Scripture, 
but  as  independent  observers  of  ethnographical  facts,  and 
include  all  peoples  whose  distinctive  ethnical  characters 
assign  them  to  the  same  group  with  the  Hebrews,  Syrians, 
and  Arabs. 

The  scientific  definition  of  an  ethnographical  group 
depends  on  a  variety  of  considerations ;  for  direct  historical 
evidence  of  an  unimpeachable  kind  as  to  the  original  seats 
and  kindred  of  ancient  peoples  is  not  generally  to  be 
had.  The  defects  of  historical  tradition  must  therefore  be 
supplied  by  observation,  partly  of  inherited  physical 
characteristics,  and  partly  of  mental  characteristics  habits 
and  attainments  such  as  are  usually  transmitted  from 
parent  to  child.  Among  the  indirect  criteria  of  kinship 
between  nations,  the  most  obvious,  and  the  one  which  has 
hitherto  been  most  carefully  studied,  is  the  criterion  of 
language ;  for  it  is  observed  that  the  languages  of  man- 
kind form  a  series  of  natural  groups,  and  that  within  each 
group  it  is  possible  to  arrange  the  several  languages  which 
it  contains  in  what  may  be  called  a  genealogical  order, 
according  to  degrees  of  kinship.  Now  it  may  not  always 
be  true  that  people  of  the  same  or  kindred  speech  are  as 
closely  related  by  actual  descent  as  they  seem  to  be  from 
the  language  they  speak ;  a  Gaelic  tribe,  for  example,  may 
forget  their  ancient  speech,  and  learn  to  speak  a  Teutonic 
dialect,  without  ceasing  to  be  true  Gaels  by  blood.  But,  in 
general,  large  groups  of  men  do  not  readily  change  their 


LECT.  I.  CRITERION    OF    RACE.  7 

language,  but  go  on  from  generation  to  generation  speaking 
the  ancestral  dialect  with  such  gradual  modification  as  the 
lapse  of  time  brings  about.  As  a  rule,  therefore,  the  classi- 
fication of  mankind  by  language,  at  least  when  applied  to 
large  masses,  will  approach  pretty  closely  to  a  natural  classi- 
fication ;  and  in  a  large  proportion  of  cases,  the  language  of 
a  mixed  race  will  prove  on  examination  to  be  that  of  the 
stock  whose  blood  is  predominant.  Where  this  is  not  the 
case,  where  a  minority  has  imposed  its  speech  on  a 
majority,  we  may  safely  conclude  that  it  has  done  so  in 
virtue  of  a  natural  pre-eminence,  a  power  of  shaping 
lower  races  in  its  own  mould,  which  is  not  confined  to  the 
sphere  of  language,  but  extends  to  all  parts  of  life.  Where 
we  find  unity  of  language,  we  can  at  least  say  with 
certainty  that  we  are  dealing  with  a  group  of  men  who  are 
subject  to  common  influences  of  the  most  subtle  and  far- 
reaching  kind ;  and  where  unity  of  speech  has  prevailed  for 
many  generations,  we  may  be  sure  that  the  continued 
action  of  these  influences  has  produced  great  uniformity 
of  physical  and  mental  type.  When  we  come  to  deal  with 
groups  which  have  long  had  separate  histories,  and  whose 
languages  are  therefore  not  identical  but  only  cognate,  the 
case  is  not  so  strong.  A  Scot,  for  example,  whose  blood  is 
a  mixture  of  the  Teutonic  and  Celtic,  and  a  North  German, 
who  is  partly  Teutonic  and  partly  Wendish,  speak  languages 
belonging  to  the  same  Teutonic  stock,  but  in  each  case  the 
non-Teutonic  element  in  the  blood,  though  it  has  not  ruled 
the  language,  has  had  a  perceptible  effect  on  the  national 
character,  so  that  the  difference  of  type  between  the  two 
men  is  greater  than  the  difference  of  their  dialects  indicates. 
It  is  plain,  therefore,  that  kinship  in  language  is  not  an 
exact  measure  of  the  degree  of  affinity  as  determined  by 
the  sum  of  race  characters ;  but  on  the  whole  it  remains 
true,  that  the  stock  which  is  strong  enougli,  whether  by 


8  UNITY    AND    HOMOGENEITY  lect.  i. 

numbers  or  by  genius,  to  impress  its  language  on  a  nation, 
must  exercise  a  predominant  influence  on  the  national 
type  in  other  respects  also ;  and  to  this  extent  the 
classification  of  races  by  language  must  be  called  natural 
and  not  artificial.  Especially  is  this  true  for  ancient  times, 
when  the  absence  of  literature,  and  especially  of  religious 
books,  made  it  much  more  difficult  than  it  has  been  in 
recent  ages  for  a  new  language  to  establish  itself  in  a  race 
to  which  it  was  originally  foreign.  All  Egypt  now  speaks 
Arabic — a  Semitic  tongue — and  yet  the  population  is 
very  far  from  having  assimilated  itself  to  the  Arabic  type. 
But  this  could  not  have  happened  without  the  Goran  and 
the  religion  of  the  Goran,  which  have  given  what  I  may 
call  an  artificial  advantage  to  the  Arabic  language.  In 
very  ancient  times  the  language  of  a  conquering  people 
had  no  such  artificial  help  in  preserving  and  propagating 
itself.  A  tongue  which  is  spoken  and  not  written  makes 
way  only  in  proportion  as  those  who  speak  it  are  able 
to  hold  their  own  without  assistance  from  the  literary 
achievements  of  their  ancestors. 

As  regards  the  Semitic  nations,  which,  as  I  have  already 
said,  are  classed  together  on  the  ground  of  similarity  of 
language,  we  have  every  reason  to  recognise  their  linguistic 
kinship  as  only  one  manifestation  of  a  very  marked  general 
unity  of  type.  The  unity  is  not  perfect ;  it  would  not,  for 
example,  be  safe  to  make  generalisations  about  the  Semitic 
character  from  the  Arabian  nomads,  and  to  apply  them  to 
the  ancient  Babylonians.  And  for  this  there  are  probably 
two  reasons.  On  the  one  hand,  the  Semite  of  the  Arabian 
desert  and  the  Semite  of  the  Babylonian  alluvium  lived 
under  altogether  different  physical  and  moral  conditions ; 
the  difference  of  environment  is  as  complete  as  possible. 
And  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  pretty  certain  that  the  Arabs 
of  the  desert  have   been   from   time   immemorial   a   race 


LECT.  I.  OF   THE    SEMITIC    RACE.  9 

practically  unmixed,  while  the  Babylonians,  and  other 
members  of  the  same  family  settled  on  the  fringes  of  the 
Semitic  land,  were  in  all  probability  largely  mingled  with 
the  blood  of  other  races,  and  underwent  a  corresponding 
modification  of  type. 

But  when  every  allowance  is  made  for  demonstrable  or 
possible  variations  of  type  within  the  Semitic  field,  it  still 
remains  true  that  the  Semites  form  a  singularly  well 
marked  and  relatively  speaking  a  very  homogeneous  group. 
So  far  as  language  goes  the  evidence  to  this  effect  is  parti- 
cularly strong.  The  Semitic  tongues  are  so  closely  related 
to  one  another,  that  their  affinity  is  recognised  even  by  the 
untrained  observer ;  and  modern  science  has  little  difficulty 
in  tracing  them  back  to  a  common  speech,  and  determining 
in  a  general  way  what  the  features  of  that  speech  were. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  differences  between  these  languages 
and  those  spoken  by  other  adjacent  races  are  so  funda- 
mental and  so  wide,  that  no  sober  philologist  has  ventured 
to  lay  down  anything  positive  as  to  the  relation  of  the 
Semitic  tongues  to  other  linguistic  stocks.  Their  nearest 
kinship  seems  to  be  with  the  languages  of  North  Africa, 
but  even  here  the  common  features  are  balanced  by  pro- 
found differences.  The  evidence  of  language  therefore  tends 
to  show  that  the  period  during  which  the  original  and 
common  Semitic  speech  existed  apart,  and  developed  its 
peculiar  characters  at  a  distance  from  languages  of  other 
stocks,  must  have  been  very  long  in  comparison  with  the 
subsequent  period  during  which  the  separate  branches  of 
the  Semitic  stock,  such  as  Hebrew  Aramaic  and  Arabic, 
were  isolated  from  one  another  and  developed  into  separate 
dialects.  Or,  to  draw  the  historical  inference  from  this,  it 
would  appear  that  before  the  Hebrews,  the  Aramaeans,  and 
the  Arabs  spread  themselves  over  widely  distant  seats,  and 
began  their  course  of  separate  national  development,  there 


10  UNITY  AND    HOMOGENEITY  lect.  i. 

must  have  been  a  long  period  in  which  the  ancestors  of  all 
these  nations  lived  together  and  spoke  with  one  tongue. 
And  as  Hebrew  Aramaic  and  Arabic  are  all  much  liker  to 
one  another  than  the  old  common  Semitic  can  possibly 
have  been  to  any  of  the  languages  of  surrounding  races,  it 
would  seem  that  the  separate  existence  of  the  several 
Semitic  nations  up  to  the  time  when  their  linguistic  dis- 
tinctions were  fully  developed,  can  have  been  but  short  in 
comparison  with  the  period  during  which  the  undivided 
Semitic  stock,  living  in  separation  from  other  races,  formed 
its  peculiar  and  distinctive  type  of  speech. 

The  full  force  of  this  argument  can  hardly  be  made 
plain  without  reference  to  philological  details  of  a  kind 
unsuited  to  our  present  purpose ;  but  those  of  you  who  have 
some  acquaintance  with  the  Semitic  languages  will  readily 
admit  that  the  development  of  the  common  Semitic  system 
of  triliteral  roots,  not  to  speak  of  other  linguistic  peculiari- 
ties, must  have  been  the  affair  of  a  number  of  generations 
vastly  greater  than  was  necessary  to  develop  the  differences 
between  Hebrew  and  Arabic.  If,  now,  the  fathers  of  all  the 
Semitic  nations  lived  together  for  a  very  long  time,  at  the 
very  ancient  date  which  preceded  the  separate  history  of 
Hebrews  Aramaeans  and  Arabs, — that  is,  in  the  infancy 
of  the  races  of  mankind,  the  period  of  human  history  in 
which  individuality  went  for  nothing,  and  all  common 
influences  had  a  force  which  we  moderns  can  with  difficulty 
conceive, — it  is  clear  that  the  various  swarms  which  ulti- 
mately hived  off  from  the  common  stock  and  formed  the 
Semitic  nations  known  to  history,  must  have  carried  with 
them  a  strongly  marked  race  character,  and  many  common 
possessions  of  custom  and  idea,  besides  their  common 
language.  And  further  let  us  observe  that  the  dispersion 
of  the  Semitic  nations  was  never  carried  so  far  as  the 
dispersion  of   the  Aryans.     If   we   leave   out   of   account 


LECT.  I.  OF   THE   SEMITIC    RACE.  11 

settlements  made  over  the  seas,  —  the  South  Arabian 
colonies  in  East  Africa,  and  the  Phoenician  colonies  on  the 
coasts  and  isles  of  the  Mediterranean, — we  find  that  the 
region  of  Semitic  occupation  is  continuous  and  compact. 
Its  great  immovable  centre  is  the  vast  Arabian  peninsula, 
a  region  naturally  isolated,  and  in  virtue  of  its  physical 
characters  almost  exempt  from  immigration  or  change  of 
inhabitants.  And  from  this  central  stronghold,  which  the 
predominant  opinion  of  modern  scholars  designates  as  the 
probable  starting-point  of  the  whole  Semitic  dispersion,  the 
region  of  Semitic  speech  spreads  out  round  the  margin  of 
the  Syrian  desert  till  it  strikes  against  great  natural 
boundaries,  the  Mediterranean,  Mount  Taurus,  and  the 
mountains  of  Armenia  and  Iran.  From  the  earliest  dawn 
of  history  all  that  lies  within  these  limits  was  fully  occu- 
pied by  Semitic  tribes  speaking  Semitic  dialects,  and  the 
compactness  of  this  settlement  must  necessarily  have  tended 
to  maintain  uniformity  of  type.  The  several  Semitic 
nations,  when  they  were  not  in  direct  contact  with  one 
another,  were  divided  not  by  alien  populations  but  only  by 
the  natural  barriers  of  mountain  and  desert.  These  natural 
barriers,  indeed,  were  numerous,  and  served  to  break  up  the 
race  into  a  number  of  small  tribes  or  nations ;  but,  like  the 
mountains  of  Greece,  they  were  not  so  formidable  as  to 
prevent  the  separate  states  from  maintaining  a  great  deal 
of  intercourse,  which,  whether  peaceful  or  warlike,  tended 
to  perpetuate  the  original  community  of  type.  Nor  was 
the  operation  of  these  causes  disturbed  in  ancient  times  by 
any  great  foreign  immigration.  The  early  Egyptian  in- 
vasions of  Syria  were  not  accompanied  by  any  attempt  at 
colonisation ;  and  though  the  so-called  Hittite  monuments, 
which  have  given  rise  to  so  much  speculation,  may  afford 
evidence  that  a  non- Semitic  people  from  Asia  Minor  at  one 
time  pushed  its  way  into  Northern  Syria,  it  is  pretty  clear 


12  UNITY    AND    HOMOGENEITY  i.ect.  I. 


that  the  Hittites  of  the  Bible,  i.e.  the  non-Aramaic  com- 
munities of  Coele-Syria,  were  a  branch  of  the  Canaanite 
stock,  and  that  the  utmost  concession  that  can  be  made  tp 
modern  theories  on  this  subject  is  that  they  may  for  a  time 
have  been  dominated  by  a  non- Semitic  aristocracy.  At 
one  time  it  was  not  uncommon  to  represent  the  Philistines 
as  a  non-Semitic  people,  but  it  is  now  generally  recognised 
that  the  arguments  for  this  view  are  inadequate,  and  that, 
though  they  came  into  Palestine  from  across  the  sea,  from 
Caphtor,  i.e.  probably  from  Crete,  they  were  either  mainly 
of  Semitic  blood  or  at  least  were  already  thoroughly  Semi- 
tised  at  the  time  of  their  immigration,  alike  in  speech  and 
in  religion. 

Coming  down  to  later  times,  we  find  that  the  Assyrian 
Babylonian  and  Persian  conquests  made  no    considerable 
change  in  the  general  type  of  the  population  of  the  Semitic 
lands.      National  and  tribal  landmarks  were  removed,  and 
there  were  considerable  shiftings  of  population  within  the 
Semitic  area,  but  no  great  incursion  of  new  populations  of 
alien  stock.      In  the    Greek  and  Ptoman    periods,  on  the 
contrary,  a  large  foreign  element  was  introduced  into  the 
towns  of  Syria  ;  but  as  the  immigration  was  practically  con- 
fined to  the  cities,  hardly  touching  the  rural  districts,  its 
effects  in  modifying  racial  type  were,  it  would  seem,  of  a 
very  transitory  character.     For  in  Eastern  cities  the  death- 
rate    habitually    exceeds   the    birth-rate,   and   the   urban 
population  is  maintained  only  by  constant  recruital  from 
the  country,  so  that  it  is  the  blood  of  the  peasantry  which 
ultimately  determines  the  type  of  the  population.     Thus  it 
is  to  be  explained  that  after  the  Arab  conquest  of  Syria, 
the  Greek  element  in  the  population  rapidly  disappeared. 
Indeed,  one  of  the  most  palpable  proofs  that  the  populations 
of  all  the  old  Semitic  lands  possessed  a  remarkable  homo- 
geneity of  character,  is  the  fact  that  in  them,  and  in  them 


LECT.  I.  OF    THE   SEMITIC    RACE.  13 


alone,  the  Arabs  and  Arab  influence  took  permanent  root. 
The  Moslem  conquests  extended  far  beyond  these  limits, 
but  except  in  the  old  Semitic  countries,  Islam  speedily  took 
new  shapes,  and  the  Arab  domination  soon  gave  way  before 
the  reaction  of  the  mass  of  its  foreign  subjects. 

Thus  the  whole  course  of  history,  from  the  earliest  date 
to  which  authentic  knowledge  extends  down  to  the  time  of 
the  decay  of  the  Caliphate,  records  no  great  permanent 
disturbance  of  population  to  affect  the  constancy  of  the 
Semitic  type  within  its  original  seats,  apart  from  the 
temporary  Hellenisation  of  the  great  cities  already  spoken 
of.  Such  disturbances  as  did  take  place  consisted  partly 
of  mere  local  displacements  among  the  settled  Semites, 
partly,  and  in  a  much  greater  degree,  of  the  arrival  and 
establishment  in  the  cultivated  lands  of  successive  hordes 
of  Semitic  nomads  from  the  Arabian  wilderness,  which  on 
their  settlement  found  themselves  surrounded  by  popula- 
tions so  nearly  of  their  own  type  that  the  complete 
fusion  of  the  old  and  new  inhabitants  was  effected  without 
difficulty,  and  without  modification  of  the  general  character 
of  the  race.  If  at  any  point  in  its  settlements,  except 
along  the  frontiers,  the  Semitic  blood  was  largely  modified 
by  foreign  admixture,  this  must  have  taken  place  in 
prehistoric  times,  or  by  fusion  with  other  races  which 
may  have  occupied  the  country  before  the  arrival  of  the 
Semites.  How  far  anything  of  this  sort  actually  happened 
can  only  be  matter  of  conjecture,  for  the  special  hypotheses 
which  have  sometimes  been  put  forth — as,  for  example,  that 
there  was  a  considerable  strain  of  pre-Semitic  blood  in  the 
Phoenicians  and  Canaanites — rest  on  presumptions  of  no 
conclusive  sort.  What  is  certain  is  that  the  Semitic 
settlements  in  Asia  were  practically  complete  at  the  first 
dawn  of  history,  and  that  the  Semitic  blood  was  constantly 
reinforced,  from   very  early  times,  by  fresh  immigrations 


14  THE    SEMITES    OF  lect.  I. 


from  the  desert.  There  is  hardly  another  part  of  the 
world  where  we  have  such  good  historical  reasons  for 
presuming  that  linguistic  affinity  will  prove  a  safe  indica- 
tion of  affinity  in  race,  and  in  general  physical  and  mental 
type.  And  this  presumption  is  not  belied  by  the  results 
of  nearer  enquiry.  Those  who  have  busied  themselves 
with  the  history  and  literature  of  the  Semitic  peoples,  bear 
uniform  testimony  to  the  close  family  likeness  that  runs 
through  them  all. 

It  is  only  natural  that  this  homogeneity  of  type  appears 
to  be  modified  on  the  frontiers  of  the  Semitic  field.  To 
the  "West,  if  we  leave  the  transmarine  colonies  out  of  view, 
natural  conditions  drew  a  sharp  line  of  local  demarcation 
between  the  Semites  and  their  alien  neighbours.  The  Eed 
Sea  and  the  desert  north  of  it  formed  a  geographical  barrier, 
which  was  often  crossed  by  the  expansive  force  of  the 
Semitic  race,  but  which  appears  to  have  eff'ectually  checked 
the  advance  into  Asia  of  African  populations.  But  on  the 
East,  the  fertile  basin  of  the  Euphrates  and  Tigris  seems  in 
ancient  as  in  modern  times  to  have  been  a  meeting-place 
of  races.  The  preponderating  opinion  of  Assyriologists  is 
to  the  eff'ect  that  the  civilisation  of  Assyria  and  Babylonia 
was  not  purely  Semitic,  and  that  the  ancient  population  of 
these  parts  contained  a  large  pre-Semitic  element,  whose 
influence  is  especially  to  be  recognised  in  religion  and  in 
the  sacred  literature  of  the  cuneiform  records. 

If  this  be  so,  it  is  plain  that  the  cuneiform  material 
must  be  used  with  caution  in  our  enquiry  into  the  type  of 
traditional  religion  characteristic  of  the  ancient  Semites. 
That  Babylonia  is  the  best  starting-point  for  a  compara- 
tive study  of  the  sacred  beliefs  and  practices  of  the  Semitic 
peoples,  is  an  idea  which  has  lately  had  some  vogue,  and 
which  at  first  sight  appears  plausible  on  account  of  the 
threat    antiquity    of    the    monumental    evidence.     But,    in 


LECT.  I.  BABYLONIA    AND    ASSYRIA.  ]  5 

matters  of  this  sort,  ancient  and  primitive  are  not 
synonymous  terms  ;  and  we  must  not  look  for  the  most 
primitive  form  of  Semitic  faith  in  a  region  where  society 
was  not  primitive.  In  Babylonia,  it  would  seem,  society 
and  religion  alike  were  based  on  a  fusion  of  two  races,  and 
so  were  not  primitive  but  complex.  Moreover,  the  official 
system  of  Babylonian  and  Assyrian  religion,  as  it  is  known 
to  us  from  priestly  texts  and  public  inscriptions,  bears  clear 
marks  of  being  something  more  than  a  popular  traditional 
faith ;  it  has  been  artificially  moulded  by  priestcraft  and 
statecraft  in  much  the  same  way  as  the  official  religion  of 
Egypt ;  that  is  to  say,  it  is  in  great  measure  an  artificial 
combination,  for  imperial  purposes,  of  elements  drawn  from 
a  number  of  local  worships.  In  all  probability  the  actual 
religion  of  the  masses  was  always  much  simpler  than  the 
official  system ;  and  in  later  times  it  would  seem  that,  both 
in  religion  and  in  race,  Assyria  was  little  different  from  the 
adjacent  Aramaic  countries.  These  remarks  are  not  meant 
to  throw  doubt  on  the  great  importance  of  cuneiform  studies 
for  the  history  of  Semitic  religion ;  the  monumental  data 
are  valuable  for  comparison  with  what  we  know  of  the 
faith  and  worship  of  other  Semitic  peoples,  and  peculiarly 
valuable  because,  in  religion  as  in  other  matters,  the 
civilisation  of  the  Euphrates-Tigris  valley  exercised  a  great 
historical  influence  on  a  large  part  of  the  Semitic  field. 
But  the  right  point  of  departure  for  a  general  study  of 
Semitic  religion  must  be  sought  in  regions  where,  though 
our  knowledge  begins  at  a  later  date,  it  refers  to  a  simpler 
state  of  society,  and  where  accordingly  the  religious 
phenomena  revealed  to  us  are  of  an  origin  less  doubtful  and 
a  character  less  complicated.  In  many  respects  the  religion 
of  heathen  Arabia,  though  we  have  few  details  concerning 
it  that  are  not  of  post-Christian  date,  exhibits  an  extremely 
primitive  character,  corresponding  to  the  primitive  and  un- 


16  SOURCES   AND   METHOD  lect.  i. 

changing  character  of  nomadic  life.  And  with  what  may 
be  gathered  from  this  source  we  must  compare,  above  all, 
the  invaluable  notices,  preserved  in  the  Old  Testament,  of 
the  relicrion  of  the  small  Palestinian  states  before  their 
conquest  by  the  great  empires  of  the  East.  For  this 
period,  apart  from  the  Assyrian  records,  we  have  only  a 
few  precious  fragments  of  evidence  from  inscriptions,  and 
no  other  literary  evidence  of  a  contemporary  kind.  At  a 
later  date  the  evidence  from  monuments  is  multiplied  and 
Greek  literature  begins  to  give  important  aid ;  but  by 
this  time  also  we  have  reached  the  period  of  religious 
syncretism — the  period,  that  is,  when  different  faiths  and 
worships  began  to  react  on  one  another,  and  produce 
new  and  complex  forms  of  religion.  Here,  therefore,  we 
have  to  use  the  same  precautions  that  are  called  for  in 
dealing  with  the  older  syncretistic  religion  of  Babylonia 
and  Assyria ;  it  is  only  by  careful  sifting  and  comparison 
that  we  can  separate  between  ancient  use  and  modern 
innovation,  between  the  old  religious  inheritance  of  the 
Semites  and  things  that  came  in  from  without. 

Let  it  be  understood  from  the  outset  that  we  have 
not  the  materials  for  anything  like  a  complete  com- 
parative history  of  Semitic  religions,  and  that  nothing  of 
the  sort  will  be  attempted  in  these  Lectures.  But  a  careful 
study  and  comparison  of  the  various  sources  is  sufficient 
to  furnish  a  tolerably  accurate  view  of  a  series  of  general 
features,  which  recur  with  striking  uniformity  in  all  parts 
of  the  Semitic  field,  and  govern  the  evolution  of  faith  and 
worship  down  to  a  late  date.  These  widespread  and 
permanent  features  form  the  real  interest  of  Semitic 
religion  to  the  philosophical  student ;  it  was  in  them, 
and  not  in  the  things  that  vary  from  place  to  place  and 
from  time  to  time,  that  the  strength  of  Semitic  religion 
lay,  and  it  is  to  them  therefore  that  we  must  look  for  help 


LECT.    I. 


OF    THE    ENQUIRY.  17 


in  the  most  important  practical  application  of  our  studies, 
for  light  on  the  great  question  of  the  relation  of  the 
positive  Semitic  religions  to  the  earlier  faith  of  the  race. 

Before  entering  upon  the  particulars  of  our  enquiry,  I 
must  still  detain  you  with  a  few  words  about  the  method 
and  order  of  investigation  that  seem  to  be  prescribed  by 
the  nature  of  the  subject.  To  get  a  true  and  well-defined 
picture  of  the  type  of  Semitic  religion,  we  must  not  only 
study  the  parts  separately,  but  must  have  clear  views  of 
the  place  and  proportion  of  each  part  in  its  relation  to  the 
whole.  To  this  end  it  is  very  desirable  that  we  should 
follow  a  natural  order  of  enquiry  and  exposition,  beginning 
with  those  features  of  religion  which  stood,  so  to  speak,  in 
the  foreground,  and  therefore  bulked  most  largely  in 
religious  life.  And  here  we  shall  go  very  far  wrong  if 
we  take  it  for  granted  that  what  is  the  most  important 
and  prominent  side  of  religion  to  us  was  equally  important 
in  the  ancient  society  with  which  we  are  to  deal.  In 
connection  with  every  religion,  whether  ancient  or  modern, 
we  find  on  the  one  hand  certain  beliefs,  and  on  the  other 
certain  institutions  ritual  practices  and  rules  of  conduct. 
Our  modern  habit  is  to  look  at  religion  from  the  side  of 
belief  rather  than  of  practice ;  a  habit  largely  due  to  the 
fact  that,  till  comparatively  recent  times,  almost  the  only 
forms  of  religion  which  have  attracted  much  serious  study 
in  Europe  have  been  those  of  the  various  Christian 
Churches,  and  that  the  controversies  between  these  Churches 
have  constantly  turned  on  diversities  of  dogma,  even  where 
the  immediate  point  of  difference  has  been  one  of  ritual. 
For  in  all  parts  of  the  Christian  Church  it  is  agreed  that 
ritual  is  important  only  in  connection  with  its  interpreta- 
tion. Thus  within  Christendom  the  study  of  religion  has 
meant  mainly  the  study  of  Christian  beliefs,  and  instruc- 
tion   in    religion    has    habitually    begun    with    the   creed, 

B 


18  DOGMA   AND    MYTHOLOGY.  lect.  i. 


religious  duties  being  presented  to  the  learner  as  flowing 
from  the  dogmatic  truths  he  is  taught  to  accept.  All  this 
seems  to  us  so  much  a  matter  of  course  that,  when  we 
approach  some  strange  or  antique  religion,  we  naturally 
assume  that  here  also  our  first  business  is  to  search  for 
a  creed,  and  find  in  it  the  key  to  ritual  and  practice.  But 
i  the  antique  religions  had  for  the  most  part  no  creed ;  they 
jconsisted  entirely  of  institutions  and  practices.  No  doubt 
men  will  not  habitually  follow  certain  practices  without 
attaching  a  meaning  to  them ;  but  as  a  rule  we  find  that 
while  the  practice  was  rigorously  fixed,  the  meaning 
attached  to  it  was  extremely  vague,  and  the  same  rite  was 
explained  by  different  people  in  different  ways,  without 
any  question  of  orthodoxy  or  heterodoxy  arising  in  conse- 
quence. In  ancient  Greece,  for  example,  certain  things 
were  done  at  a  temple,  and  people  were  agreed  that  it 
would  be  impious  not  to  do  them.  But  if  you  had  asked 
why  they  were  done,  you  would  probably  have  had  several 
mutually  contradictory  explanations  from  different  persons, 
and  no  one  would  have  thought  it  a  matter  of  the  least 
religious  importance  which  of  these  you  chose  to  adopt. 
Indeed  the  explanations  offered  would  not  have  been  of 
a  kind  to  stir  any  strong  feeling ;  for  in  most  cases  they 
would  have  been  merely  different  stories  as  to  the  circum- 
stances under  which  the  rite  first  came  to  be  established, 
by  the  command  or  by  the  direct  example  of  the  god. 
The  rite,  in  short,  was  connected  not  with  a  dogma  but 
with  a  myth. 

In  all  the  antique  religions,  mythology  takes  the  place 
of  dogma,  that  is,  the  sacred  lore  of  priests  and  people, 
so  far  as  it  does  not  consist  of  mere  rules  for  the  perform- 
ance of  religious  acts,  assumes  the  form  of  stories  about 
the  gods ;  and  these  stories  afford  the  only  explanation  that 
is  offered  of  the   precepts   of  religion   and  the  prescribed 


LECT.  I.  MYTH    AND    RITUAL.  19 


rules  of  ritual.      But,  strictly  speaking,  this  mythology  was 
no  essential  part  of  ancient  religion,  for  it  had  no  sacred 
sanction  and  no  binding  force  on  the  worshijDpers.      The 
myths    connected   with   individual    sanctuaries    and    cere- 
monies were  merely  part  of  the  apparatus  of  the  worship ; 
they  served  to  excite  the  fancy  and  sustain  the  interest  of 
the   worshipper ;    but   he   was   often    offered    a    choice   of 
several  accounts  of  the  same  thing,  and  provided  that  he 
fulfilled  the  ritual  with   accuracy,  no  one  cared  what  he 
believed  about   its   origin.       Belief  in  a  certain  series  of 
myths  was  neither  obligatory  as  a  part  of  true  religion,  nor 
was  it  supposed  that,  by  believing,  a  man  acquired  religious 
merit  and  conciliated  the  favour  of  the  gods.      What  was 
(obligatory  or   meritorious   was   the   exact   performance   of 
certain  sacred  acts  prescribed  by  religious  tradition.      This 
being  so,  it  follows  that  mythology  ought  not  to  take  the 
prominent  place   that  is    too   often  assigned  to  it  in  the 
scientific  study  of  ancient  faiths.      So  far  as  myths  consist 
of  explanations  of  ritual  their  value  is  altogether  secondary, 
and   it  may  be   affirmed   with   confidence   that  in   almost 
every  case  the  myth  was  derived  from  the  ritual,  and  not 
the  ritual  from  the  myth ;  for  the  ritual  was  fixed  and  the 
myth  was  variable,  the  ritual  was  obligatory  and  faith  in 
the  myth  was  at  the  discretion  of   the  worshipper.     Now 
by  far  the  largest  part  of  the  myths  of  antique  religions 
are  connected  with  the  ritual  of  particular  shrines,  or  with 
the  religious  observances  of  particular  tribes  and  districts. 
In  all  such  cases  it  is  probable,  in  most  cases  it  is  certain, 
that   the   myth  is    merely  the  explanation   of   a  religious 
usage ;  and  ordinarily  it  is  such  an  explanation  as  could 
not  have  arisen   till  the  original  sense  of  the  usage  had 
more  or  less  fallen  into  oblivion.      As  a  rule  the  myth  is 
no  explanation  of  the  origin  of  the  ritual  to  any  one  who' 
does  not  believe  it  to  be  a  narrative  of  real  occurrences, 


20  THE   DEPENDENCE    OF  LECT.  I. 

and  the  boldest  mythologist  will  not  believe  that.  But,  if 
it  be  not  true,  the  myth  itself  requires  to  be  explained, 
and  every  principle  of  philosophy  and  common  sense 
demands  that  the  explanation  be  sought,  not  in  arbitrary 
allegorical  theories,  but  in  the  actual  facts  of  ritual  or 
religious  custom  to  which  the  myth  attaches.  The  con- 
clusion is,  that  in  the  study  of  ancient  religions  we  must 
begin,  not  with  myth,  but  with  ritual  and  traditional  usage. 

Nor  can  it  be  fairly  set  against  this  conclusion,  that 
there  are  certain  myths  which  are  not  mere  explanations 
of  traditional  practices,  but  exhibit  the  beginnings  of  larger 
religious  speculation,  or  of  an  attempt  to  systematise  and 
reduce  to  order  the  motley  variety  of  local  worships  and 
beliefs.  For  in  this  case  the  secondary  character  of  the 
myths  is  still  more  clearly  marked.  They  are  either  pro- 
ducts of  early  philosophy,  reflecting  on  the  nature  of  the 
universe ;  or  they  are  political  in  scope,  being  designed  to 
supply  a  thread  of  union  between  the  various  worships  of 
groups,  originally  distinct,  which  have  been  united  into 
one  social  or  political  organism ;  or,  finally,  they  are  due 
to  the  free  play  of  epic  imagination.  But  philosophy 
politics  and  poetry  are  something  more,  or  something  less, 
than  religion  pure  and  simple. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that,  in  the  later  stages  of  ancient 
religions,  mythology  acquired  an  increased  importance.  In 
the  struggle  of  heathenism  with  scepticism  on  the  one 
hand  and  Christianity  on  the  other,  the  supporters  of  the 
old  traditional  religion  were  driven  to  search  for  ideas  of 
a  modern  cast,  which  they  could  represent  as  the  true 
inner  meaning  of  the  traditional  rites.  To  this  end 
they  laid  hold  of  the  old  myths,  and  applied  to  them  an 
allegorical  system  of  interpretation.  Myth  interpreted 
by  the  aid  of  allegory  became  the  favourite  means  of 
infusing  a  new  significance  into  ancient  forms.     But  the 


LKCT.  I.  MYTH    ON    RITUAL.  21 

theories  thus  developed  are  the  falsest  of  false  guides  as 
to  the  original  meaning  of  the  old  religions. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  ancient  myths  taken  in  their 
natural  sense,  without  allegorical  gloss,  are  plainly  of  great 
importance  as  testimonies  to  the  views  of  the  nature  of 
the  gods  that  were  prevalent  when  they  were  formed. 
For  though  the  mythical  details  had  no  dogmatic  value 
and  no  binding  authority  over  faith,  it  is  to  be  supposed 
that  nothing  was  put  into  a  myth  which  people  at  that 
time  were  not  prepared  to  believe  without  offence.  But 
so  far  as  the  way  of  thinking  expressed  in  the  myth  was 
not  already  expressed  in  the  ritual  itself,  it  had  no 
properly  religious  sanction ;  the  myth  apart  from  the 
ritual  affords  only  a  doubtful  and  slippery  kind  of 
evidence.  Before  we  can  handle  myths  with  any  con- 
fidence, we  must  have  some  definite  hold  of  the  ideas 
expressed  in  the  ritual  tradition,  which  incorporated  the 
only  fixed  and  statutory  elements  of  the  religion. 

All  this,  I  hope,  will  become  clearer  to  us  as  we  proceed 
with  our  enquiry,  and  learn  by  practical  example  the  use 
to  be  made  of  the  different  lines  of  evidence  open  to  us. 
But  it  is  of  the  first  importance  to  realise  clearly  from 
the  outset  that  ritual  and  practical  usage  were,  strictly 
speaking,  the  sum  total  of  ancient  religions.  Eeligion 
in  primitive  times  was  not  a  system  of  belief  with 
practical  applications ;  it  was  a  body  of  fixed  traditional 
practices,  to  which  every  member  of  society  conformed  as 
a  matter  of  course.  Men  would  not  be  men  if  they  agreed 
to  do  certain  things  without  havincj  a  reason  for  their 
action ;  but  in  ancient  religion  the  reason  was  not  first 
formulated  as  a  doctrine  and  then  expressed  in  practice, 
but  conversely,  practice  preceded  doctrinal  theory.  Men 
form  general  rules  of  conduct  before  they  begin  to 
express  general  principles  in  words ;   political  institutions 


22  ANALOGY   OF   RELIGIOUS  lect.  i. 

are  older  than  political  theories,  and  in  like  manner 
religious  institutions  are  older  than  religious  theories. 
This  analogy  is  not  arbitrarily  chosen,  for  in  fact  the 
parallelism  in  ancient  society  between  religious  and 
political  institutions  is  complete.  In  each  sphere  great 
importance  was  attached  to  form  and  precedent,  but  the 
explanation  why  the  precedent  was  followed  consisted 
merely  of  a  legend  as  to  its  first  establishment.  That 
the  precedent,  once  established,  was  authoritative  did  not 
appear  to  require  any  proof.  The  rules  of  society  were 
based  on  precedent,  and  the  continued  existence  of  the 
society  was  sufficient  reason  why  a  precedent  once  set 
should  continue  to  be  followed. 

Strictly  speaking,  indeed,  I  understate  the  case  when  I 

say    that    the    oldest    religious    and    political    institutions 

present   a   close   analogy.      It  would   be   more   correct   to 

say  that  they  were  parts  of  one  whole  of  social  custom. 

lieligion  was  a  part  of  the  organised  social  life  into  which 

a  man  was  born,  and  to  which  he  conformed  through  life 

in  the  same  unconscious  way  in  which  men  fall  into  any 

habitual  practice   of   the  society  in  which  they  live.     Men 

took  the  gods  and  their  worship  for  granted,  just  as  they 

took  the  other  usages  of  the  state  for  granted,  and  if  they 

reasoned   or  speculated   about   them,  they  did   so   on   the 

presupposition    that    the     traditional    usages    were     fixed 

things,  behind  which   their   reasonings  must  not  go,  and 

which    no   reasoning   could  be   allowed   to   overturn.      To 

us   moderns  religion  is  above   all  a  matter  of   individual 

conviction  and  reasoned  belief,  but  to  the   ancients   it  was 

a  part  of  the   citizen's   public  life,  reduced  to  fixed  forms, 

which  he  was  not  bound  to  understand  and  was   not   at 

liberty    to    criticise.       Society    demanded   of    each  of    its 

members   the  observance   of   the   forms,  not  for  his   sake 

but   for   its   own,  for   if    its  religion  was    tampered  with 


LECT.  I.  AND    POLITICAL   INSTITUTIONS.  23 

the  bases  of  society  were  undermined,  and  the  favour  of 
the  gods  was  forfeited.  But  so  long  as  the  prescribed 
religious  forms  were  duly  observed,  a  man  was  recognised 
as  a  pious  man,  and  no  one  asked  how  his  religion  was 
rooted  in  his  heart  or  affected  his  reason.  Eeligious  like 
political  duty,  of  which  indeed  it  was  a  part,  was  entirely 
comprehended  in  the  observance  of  certain  fixed  rules  of 
outward  conduct. 

The  conclusion  from  all  this  as  to  the  method  of  our 
investigation  is  obvious.  When  we  study  the  political 
structure  of  an  early  society,  we  do  not  begin  by  asking 
what  is  recorded  of  the  first  legislators,  or  what  theory 
men  advanced  as  to  the  reason  of  their  institutions ;  we 
try  to  understand  what  the  institutions  were,  and  how 
they  shaped  men's  lives.  In  like  manner,  in  the  study 
of  Semitic  religion,  we  must  not  begin  by  asking  what  was 
told  about  the  gods,  but  what  the  working  religious 
institutions  were,  and  how  they  shaped  the  lives  of  the 
worshippers.  Our  enquiry  therefore,  will  be  directed  to 
the  religious  institutions  which  governed  the  lives  of  men 
of  Semitic  race. 

In  following  out  this  plan,  however,  we  shall  do  well 
not  to  throw  ourselves  at  once  upon  the  multitudinous 
details  of  rite  and  ceremony,  but  to  devote  our  attention 
to  certain  broad  features  of  the  sacred  institutions  which 
are  sufficiently  well  marked  to  be  realised  at  once.  If  we 
were  called  upon  to  examine  the  political  institutions  of 
antiquity,  we  should  find  it  convenient  to  carry  with  us 
some  general  notion  of  the  several  types  of  government 
under  which  the  multifarious  institutions  of  ancient  states 
arrange  themselves.  And  in  like  manner  it  will  be  useful 
for  us,  when  we  examine  the  religious  institutions  of  the 
Semites,  to  have  first  some  general  knowledge  of  the  types 
of  divine  governance,  the  various  ruling  conceptions  of  the 


24  THE   NATURE 


LECT.    I. 


relations  of  the  gods  to  man,  which  underlie  the  rites  and 
ordinances  of  religion  in  different  places  and  at  different 
times.  Such  knowledge  we  can  obtain  in  a  provisional 
form,  before  entering  on  a  mass  of  ritual  details,  mainly  by- 
considering  the  titles  of  honour  by  which  men  addressed 
their  gods,  and  the  language  in  which  they  expressed  their 
dependence  on  them.  From  these  we  can  see  at  once,  in  a 
broad,  general  way,  what  place  the  gods  held  in  the  social 
system  of  antiquity,  and  under  what  general  categories 
their  relations  to  their  worshippers  fell.  The  broad 
results  thus  reached  must  then  be  developed,  and  at  the 
same  time  controlled  and  rendered  more  precise,  by  an 
examination  in  detail  of  the  working  institutions  of 
religion. 

The  question  of  the  metaphysical  nature  of  the  gods,  as 
distinct  from  their  social  office  and  function,  must  be  left 
in  the  background  till  this  whole  investigation  is  com- 
pleted. It  is  vain  to  ask  what  the  gods  are  in  themselves 
till  we  have  studied  them  in  what  I  may  call  their  public 
life,  that  is,  in  the  stated  intercourse  between  them  and 
their  worshippers  which  was  kept  up  by  means  of  the 
prescribed  forms  of  cultus.  From  the  antique  point  of 
view,  indeed,  the  question  what  the  gods  are  in  themselves 
is  not  a  religious  but  a  speculative  one ;  what  is  requisite 
to  religion  is  a  practical  acquaintance  with  the  rules  on 
which  the  deity  acts  and  on  which  he  expects  his 
worshippers  to  frame  their  conduct — what  in  2  Kings 
xvii.  2  6  is  called  the  "  manner  "  or  rather  the  "  customary 
law"  (mishpat\  of  the  god  of  the  land.  This  is  true 
even  of  the  religion  of  Israel.  When  the  prophets 
speak  of  the  knowledge  of  God,  they  always  mean  a 
practical  knowledge  of  the  laws  and  principles  of  His 
government  in  Israel,^  and  a  summary  expression  for 
^  See  especially  Hosea,  chap.  iv. 


T.ECT.  I.  OF    THE    GODS.  2o 

religion  as  a  wliole  is  "  the  knowledge  and  fear  of  Jehovah,"  ^ 
i.e.  the  knowledge  of  what  Jehovah  prescribes,  combined 
with  a  reverent  obedience.  An  extreme  scepticism  towards 
all  religious  speculation  is  recommended  in  the  Book  of 
Ecclesiastes  as  the  proper  attitude  of  piety,  for  no  amount 
of  discussion  can  carry  a  man  beyond  the  plain  rule  to 
"  fear  God  and  keep  His  commandments."  ^  This  counsel 
the  author  puts  into  the  mouth  of  Solomon,  and  so 
rej^resents  it,  not  unjustly,  as  summing  up  the  old  view  of 
religion,  which  in  more  modern  days  had  unfortunately 
begun  to  be  undermined. 

The  propriety  of  keeping  back  all  metaphysical  questions 
as  to  the  nature  of  the  gods  till  we  have  studied  the 
practices  of  religion  in  detail,  becomes  very  apparent  if  we 
consider  for  a,  moment  what  befel  the  later  philosophers 
and  theosophists  of  heathenism  in  their  attempts  to  con- 
struct a  theory  of  the  traditional  religion.  We  find  that 
they  were  not  able  to  give  any  account  of  the  nature  of 
the  gods  from  which  all  the  received  practices  of  worship 
could  be  rationally  deduced,  and  accordingly  those  of  them 
who  had  any  pretension  to  be  orthodox  were  compelled  to 
have  recourse  to  the  most  violent  allegorical  interpreta- 
tions in  order  to  brine;  the  established  ritual  into 
accordance  with  their  theories.^  The  reason  for  this  is 
obvious.  The  traditional  usages  of  religion  had  grown  up 
gradually  in  the  course  of  many  centuries,  and  reflected 
habits  of  thought  characteristic  of  very  diverse  stages  of 
man's  intellectual  and  moral  development.  No  one  con- 
ception of  the  nature  of  the  gods  could  possibly  afford  the 
clue  to  all  parts  of  that  motley  complex  of  rites  and 
ceremonies  which  the  later  paganism  had  received  by 
inheritance,  from  a  scries  of  ancestors  in  every  stage  of 

1  Isaiah  xi.  2.  2  EccIcs.  xii.  13. 

^  See,  for  example,  Plutarch's  Greek  and  Roman  Quediona. 


26  THE    EELATIONS    BETWEEN  lect.  i. 

culture  from  pure  savagery  upwards.  The  record  of  the 
relidous  thouQ-ht  of  mankind,  as  it  is  embodied  in  religious 
institutions,  resembles  the  geological  record  of  the  history 
of  the  earth's  crust ;  the  new  and  the  old  are  preserved 
side  by  side,  or  rather  layer  upon  layer.  The  classification 
of  ritual  formations  in  their  proper  sequence  is  the  first 
step  towards  their  explanation,  and  that  explanation  itself 
must  take  the  form,  not  of  a  speculative  theory,  but  of  a 
rational  life-history. 

I  have  already  explained  that,  in  attempting  such  a  life- 
history  of  religious  institutions,  we  must  begin  by  forming 
some  preliminary  ideas  of  the  practical  relation  in  which 
the  gods  of  antiquity  stood  to  their  worshippers.  I  have 
now  to  add,  that  we  shall  also  find  it  necessary  to  have 
before  us  from  the  outset  some  elementary  notions  of  the 
relations  which  early  races  of  mankind  conceived  to 
subsist  between  gods  and  men  on  the  one  hand,  and  the 
material  universe  on  the  other.  All  acts  of  ancient 
worship  have  a  material  embodiment,  the  form  of  which 
is  determined  by  the  consideration  that  gods  and  men 
alike  stand  in  certain  fixed  relations  to  particular  parts 
or  aspects  of  physical  nature.  Certain  places,  certain 
things,  even  certain  animal  kinds  are  conceived  as  holy, 
i.e.  as  standing  in  a  near  relation  to  the  gods,  and  claiming 
special  reverence  from  men,  and  this  conception  plays 
a  very  large  part  in  the  development  of  all  religious 
institutions.  Here  again  we  have  a  problem  that  cannot 
be  solved  by  a  priori  methods ;  it  is  only  as  we  move 
onward  from  step  to  step  in  the  analysis  of  the  details  of 
ritual  observances  that  we  can  hope  to  gain  full  insight 
into  the  relations  of  the  gods  to  physical  nature.  But 
there  are  certain  broad  features  in  the  ancient  conception 
of  the  universe,  and  of  the  relations  of  its  parts  to  one 
another,  which  can   be  grasped  at  once,  upon  a  merely  pre- 


LKCT.  I.  GODS    MEN    AND    NATURE.  27 

liminary  survey,  and  we  sliall  find  it  profitable  to  give 
attention  to  these  at  an  early  stage  of  our  discussion. 

I  propose,  therefore,  to  devote  my  second  lecture  to  the 
nature  of  the  antique  religious  community  and  the  relations 
of  the  gods  to  their  worshippers.  After  this  we  will  pro- 
ceed to  consider  the  relations  of  the  gods  to  physical  nature, 
not  in  a  complete  or  exhaustive  way,  but  in  a  manner 
entirely  preliminary  and  provisional,  and  only  so  far  as  is 
necessary  to  enable  us  to  understand  the  material  basis  of 
ancient  ritual.  After  these  preliminary  enquiries  have 
furnished  us  with  certain  necessary  points  of  view,  we  shall 
be  in  a  position  to  take  up  the  institutions  of  worship  in 
an  orderly  manner,  and  make  an  attempt  to  work  out 
their  life-history.  We  shall  find  that  the  history  of 
religious  institutions  is  the  history  of  ancient  religion  itself, 
as  a  practical  force  in  the  development  of  the  human  race, 
and  that  the  articulate  efforts  of  the  antique  intellect  to 
comprehend  the  meaning  of  religion,  the  nature  of  the  gods, 
and  the  principles  on  which  they  deal  with  men,  take  their 
point  of  departure  from  the  unspoken  ideas  embodied  in 
the  traditional  forms  of  ritual  praxis.  Whether  the  con- 
scious efforts  of  ancient  religious  thinkers  took  the  shape 
of  mythological  invention  or  of  speculative  construction, 
the  raw  material  of  thought  upon  which  they  operated  was 
derived  from  the  common  traditional  stock  of  religious  con- 
ceptions that  was  handed  on  from  generation  to  generation, 
not  in  express  words,  but  in  the  form  of  religious  custom. 

In  accordance  with  the  rules  of  the  Burnett  Trust,  three 
courses  of  lectures,  to  be  delivered  in  successive  winters, 
are  allowed  me  for  the  development  of  this  great  subject. 
When  the  work  was  first  entrusted  to  me,  I  formed  the  plan 
of  dividing  my  task  into  three  distinct  parts.  In  the  first 
course  of  lectures  I  hoped  to  cover  the  whole  iield  of 
practical  religious  institutions.      In  the  second  I  proposed 


28  PLAN    OF    THESE    LECTURES.  lect.  I. 

to  myself  to  discuss  the  nature  and  origin  of  the  gods  of 
Semitic  heathenism,  their  relations  to  one  another,  the 
myths  that  surround  them,  and  the  whole  subject  of 
religious  belief,  so  far  as  it  is  not  directly  involved  in  the 
observances  of  daily  religious  life.  The  third  winter  would 
thus  have  been  left  free  for  an  examination  of  the  part 
which  Semitic  religion  has  played  in  universal  history,  and 
its  influence  on  the  general  progress  of  humanity,  whether 
in  virtue  of  the  early  contact  of  Semitic  faiths  with  other 
systems  of  antique  religion,  or — what  is  more  important — 
in  virtue  of  the  influence,  both  positive  and  negative,  that 
the  common  type  of  Semitic  religion  has  exercised  on  the 
formulas  and  structure  of  the  great  monotheistic  faiths  that 
have  gone  forth  from  the  Semitic  lands.  But  the  first 
division  of  the  subject  has  grown  under  my  hands,  and  I 
find  that  it  will  not  be  possible  in  a  single  winter  to  cover 
the  whole  field  of  religious  institutions  in  a  way  at  all 
adequate  to  the  fundamental  importance  of  this  part  of  the 
enquiry. 

It  will  therefore  be  necessary  to  allow  the  first  branch  of 
the  subject  to  run  over  into  the  second  course,  for  which  I 
reserve,  among  other  matters  of  interest,  the  whole  history 
of  religious  feasts  and  also  that  of  the  Semitic  priesthoods. 
I  hope,  however,  to  give  the  present  course  a  certain  com- 
pleteness in  itself  by  carrying  the  investigation  to  the  end 
of  the  great  subject  of  sacrifice.  The  origin  and  meaning 
of  sacrifice  constitute  the  central  problem  of  ancient  religion, 
and  when  this  problem  has  been  disposed  of  we  may 
naturally  feel  that  we  have  reached  a  point  of  rest  at  which 
both  speaker  and  hearers  will  be  glad  to  make  a  pause. 


LECTURE  II. 

THE    NATURE    OF    THE   RELIGIOUS    COMMUNITY,    AND    THE 
RELATION    OF    THE    GODS    TO    THEIR    WORSHIPPERS. 

We  have  seen  that  ancient  faiths  must  be  looked  on  as 
matters  of  institution  rather  than  of  dogma  or  formulated 
belief,  and  that  the  system  of  an  antique  religion  was  part 
of  the  social  order  under  which  its  adherents  lived,  so  that 
the  word  "  system  "  must  here  be  taken  in  a  practical  sense, 
as  when  we  speak  of  a  political  system,  and  not  in  the 
sense  of  an  organised  body  of  ideas  or  theological  opinions. 
Broadly  speaking,  religion  was  made  up  of  a  series  of  acts 
and  observances,  the  correct  performance  of  which  was 
necessary  or  desirable  to  secure  the  favour  of  the  gods  or 
to  avert  their  anger;  and  in  these  observances  every 
member  of  society  had  a  share,  marked  out  for  him  either 
in  virtue  of  his  being  born  within  a  certain  family  and 
community,  or  in  virtue  of  the  station,  within  the  family 
and  community,  that  he  had  come  to  hold  in  the  course  of 
his  life.  A  man  did  not  choose  his  religion  or  frame  it  for 
himself ;  it  came  to  him  as  part  of  the  general  scheme  of 
social  obligations  and  ordinances  laid  upon  him,  as  a  matter 
of  course,  by  his  position  in  the  family  and  in  the  nation. 
Individual  men  were  more  or  less  religious,  as  men  now 
are  more  or  less  patriotic ;  that  is,  they  discharged  their 
religious  duties  with  a  greater  or  less  degree  of  zeal  accord- 
ing to  their  character  and  temperament ;  but  there  was  no 
such   thing  as  an   absolutely  irreligious  man.      A  certain 

29 


30  RELIGION   AND  lect.  ii. 

amount  of  religion  was  required  of  everybody ;  for  the  due 
performance  of  religious  acts  was  a  social  obligation  in 
wliich  every  one  had  to  take  his  share,  as  a  member  of  the 
family  or  of  the  state.  Of  intolerance  in  the  modern  sense 
of  the  word  ancient  society  knew  nothing ;  it  never  per- 
secuted a  man  into  particular  beliefs  for  the  good  of  his  own 
soul.  Eeligion  did  not  exist  for  the  saving  of  souls  but  for 
the  preservation  and  welfare  of  society,  and  in  all  that  was 
necessary  to  this  end  every  man  had  to  take  his  prescribed 
part,  or  break  with  the  domestic  and  political  community  to 
which  he  belonged. 

Perhaps  the  simplest  way  of  putting  the  state  of  the 
case  is  this.  Every  human  being,  without  choice  on  his 
own  part,  but  simply  in  virtue  of  his  birth  and  upbringing, 
becomes  a  member  of  what  we  call  a  natural  society.  He 
belongs,  that  is,  to  a  certain  family  and  a  certain  nation, 
and  this  membership  lays  upon  him  certain  social  obliga- 
tions and  duties  which  he  is  called  upon  to  fulfil  as  a  matter 
of  course,  and  on  pain  of  social  penalties  and  disabilities, 
while  at  the  same  time  it  confers  upon  him  certain  social 
rights  and  advantages.  In  this  respect  the  ancient  and 
modern  worlds  are  alike;  but  there  is  this  important 
difference,  that  the  tribal  or  national  societies  of  the  ancient 
world  were  not  strictly  natural  in  the  modern  sense  of  the 
word,  for  the  gods  had  their  part  and  place  in  them  equally 
with  men.  The  circle  into  which  a  man  was  born  was  not 
simply  a  human  society,  a  circle  of  kinsfolk  and  fellow- 
citizens,  but  embraced  also  certain  divine  beings,  the  gods 
of  the  family  and  of  the  state,  which  to  the  ancient  mind 
were  as  much  a  part  of  the  particular  community  with 
which  they  stood  connected  as  the  human  members  of  tlie 
social  group.  The  relation  between  the  gods  of  antiquity 
and  their  worshippers  was  expressed  in  the  language  of 
human  relationship,  and  this  language  was  not  taken  in  a 


T,ECT.  II.  NATURAL    SOCIETY.  .'U 

figurative  sense  but  with  strict  litcrality.  If  a  god  was 
spoken  of  as  father  and  his  worshippers  as  his  offspring, 
the  meaning  was  that  the  worshippers  were  literally  of  his 
stock,  that  he  and  they  made  up  one  natural  family  witli 
reciprocal  family  duties  to  one  another.  Or  again  if  the 
god  was  addressed  as  king,  and  the  worshippers  called 
themselves  his  servants,  they  meant  that  the  supreme 
guidance  of  the  state  was  actually  in  his  hands,  and 
accordingly  the  organisation  of  the  state  included  provision 
for  consulting  his  will  and  obtaining  his  direction  in  all 
weighty  matters,  and  also  provision  for  approaching  him 
as  king  with  due  homage  and  tribute. 

Thus  a  man  was  born  into  a  fixed  relation  to  certain 
gods  as  surely  as  he  was  born  into  relation  to  his  fellow- 
men  ;  and  his  religion,  that  is,  the  part  of  conduct  which 
was  determined  by  his  relation  to  the  gods,  was  simply 
one  side  of  the  general  scheme  of  conduct  prescribed  for 
him  by  his  position  as  a  member  of  society.  There  was  no 
separation  between  the  spheres  of  religion  and  of  ordinary 
life.  Every  social  act  had  a  reference  to  the  gods  as  well 
as  to  men,  for  the  social  body  was  not  made  up  of  men 
only,  but  of  gods  and  men. 

This  account  of  the  position  of  religion  in  the  social 
system  holds  good,  I  believe,  for  all  parts  and  races  of  the 
ancient  world  in  the  earlier  stages  of  their  history.  The 
causes  of  so  remarkable  a  uniformity  lie  hidden  in  the  mists 
of  prehistoric  time,  but  must  plainly  have  been  of  a  general 
kind,  operating  on  all  parts  of  mankind  without  distinction 
of  race  and  local  environment ;  for  in  every  region  of  the 
world,  as  soon  as  we  find  a  nation  or  tribe  emerging  from 
prehistoric  darkness  into  the  light  of  authentic  history,  we 
find  also  that  its  religion  conforms  to  the  general  type 
which  has  just  been  indicated.  As  time  rolls  on  and  the 
development  of  society  advances,  modifications  take  place. 


32  EELIGION   AND  lect.  ii. 

Ill  religion  as  in  other  matters  the  transition  from  the 
antique  to  the  modern  type  of  life  is  not  sudden  and 
unprepared,  but  is  gradually  led  up  to  by  a  continuous 
disintegration  of  the  old  structure  of  society,  accompanied 
by  the  growth  of  new  ideas  and  institutions.  In  Greece, 
for  example,  the  intimate  connection  of  religion  with  the 
organisation  of  the  family  and  the  state  was  modified  and 
made  less  exclusive,  at  a  relatively  early  date,  by  the  Pan- 
Hellenic  conceptions  which  find  their  theological  expressions 
in  Homer.  If  the  Homeric  poems  were  the  Bible  of  the 
Greeks,  as  has  so  often  been  said,  the  true  meaning  of 
this  phrase  is  that  in  these  poems  utterance  was  given  to 
ideas  about  the  gods  which  broke  through  the  limitations 
of  local  and  tribal  worship,  and  held  forth  to  all  Greeks  a 
certain  common  stock  of  religious  ideas  and  motives,  not 
hampered  by  the  exclusiveness  which  in  the  earlier  stages 
of  society  allows  of  no  fellowship  in  religion  that  is  not 
also  a  fellowship  in  the  interests  of  a  siugle  kin  or  a  single 
political  group.  In  Italy  there  never  was  anything  corre- 
sponding to  the  Pan-Hellenic  ideas  that  operated  in  Greece, 
and  accordingly  the  strict  union  of  religion  and  the  state, 
the  solidarity  of  gods  and  men  as  parts  of  a  single  society 
with  common  interests  and  common  aims,  was  character- 
istically exhibited  in  the  institutions  of  Ptome  down  to 
quite  a  late  date.  But  in  Greece  as  well  as  in  Eome  the 
ordinary  traditional  work-a-day  religion  of  the  masses 
never  greatly  departed  from  the  primitive  type.  The  final 
disintegration  of  antique  religion  in  the  countries  of  Gmeco- 
Italian  civilisation  was  the  work  first  of  the  philosophers 
and  then  of  Christianity.  But  Christianity  itself,  in 
Southern  Europe,  has  not  altogether  obliterated  the  original 
features  of  the  paganism  which  it  displaced.  The  Spanish 
peasants  who  insult  the  Madonna  of  the  neighbouring 
village,  and  come  to  blows  over  the  merits  of  rival  local 


LKCT.  II.  NATURAL    SOCIETY.  33 

saints,  still  do  homage  to  tlie  same  antique  conception  of 
religion  which  in  Egypt  (as  readers  of  Juvenal  remember) 
animated  the  feuds  of  Ombos  and  Tentyra,  and  made 
hatred  for  each  other's  gods  the  formula  that  summed  up 
the  whole  local  jealousies  of  the  two  towns. 

The  principle  that  the  fundamental  conception  of  ancient 
religion  is  the  solidarity  of  the  gods  and  their  worshippers 
as  part  of  one  organic  society,  carries  with  it  important 
consequences,  which  I  propose  to  examine  in  some  detail, 
with  special  reference  to  the  group  of  religions  that  forms 
the  proper  subject  of  these  lectures.  But  though  my 
facts  and  illustrations  will  be  drawn  from  the  Semitic 
sphere,  a  great  part  of  what  I  shall  have  to  say  in  the 
present  lecture  might  be  applied,  with  very  trifling  modifi- 
cations, to  the  early  religion  of  any  other  part  of  mankind. 
The  differences  between  Semitic  and  Aryan  religion,  for 
example,  are  not  so  primitive  or  fundamental  as  is  often 
imagined,  Not  only  in  matters  of  worship,  but  in  social 
organisation  generally — and  we  have  seen  that  ancient 
religion  is  but  a  part  of  the  general  social  order  which 
embraces  gods  and  men  alike — the  two  races,  Aryans  and 
Semites,  began  on  lines  which  are  so  much  alike  as  to  be 
almost  indistinguishable,  and  the  divergence  between  their 
paths,  which  becomes  more  and  more  apparent  in  the 
course  of  ages,  was  not  altogether  an  affair  of  race  and 
innate  tendency,  but  depended  in  a  great  measure  on  the 
operation  of  special  local  and  historical  causes. 

In   both   races   the   first    steps   of  social   and    religious 

development  took  place  in  small   communities,  which    at 

the   dawn   of   history  exhibited   a   political   system   based 

on  the  principle  of  kinship,  and  were  mainly  held  togetlier 

by  the  tie  of  blood,  the  only  social  l>oud  which  then  had 

absolute  and  undisputed    strength,  being  enforced  by  the 

law  of  blood  revenge.     As  a  rule,  however,  men  of  several 

c 


34  THE    OLDEST  lect.  ll. 


clans  lived  side  by  side,  forming  communities  which  did 
not  possess  the  absolute  homogeneity  of  blood  brotherhood, 
and  yet  were  united  by  common  interests  and  the  habit 
of  friendly  association.       The  origin  of  such  associations, 
which  are  found  all  over  the  world  at  a  very  early  stage 
of  society,  need  not  occupy  us  now.      It  is  enough  to  note 
the  fact  that  they  existed,  and  were  not  maintained  by 
the  feeling  of    kindred,  but   by  habit  and  community  of 
interests.      These  local  communities    of    men  of    different 
clans,  who  lived  together  on  a  footing  of  amity,  and  had 
often  to  unite  in  common   action,  especially  in  war,  but 
also  in  affairs  of  polity  and  justice,  were  the  origin  of  the 
antique   state.       There    is    probably    no    case    in    ancient 
history  where  a   state   was  simply  the  development  of  a 
single  homogeneous  clan  or  gens,  although  the  several  clans 
which  united  to  form  a  state  often  came  in  course  of  time 
to  suppose  themselves  to  be  only  branches  of   one  great 
ancestral  brotherhood,  and  were  thus   knit  together  in  a 
closer  unity  of  sentiment  and  action.      But  in  the  begin- 
ning,  the   union    of    several   clans    for    common    political 
action  was  not  sustained  either  by  an  effective  sentiment 
of  kinship  (the  law  of  blood  revenge  uniting  only  members 
of  the  same  clan)  or  by  any  close  political  organisation, 
but  was  produced  by  the  pressure  of  practical  necessity, 
and  always  tended  towards  dissolution  when  this  practical 
pressure    was    withdrawn.       The     only     organisation     for 
common    action  was  that  the    leading  men    of    the  clans 
'    consulted  together  in  time  of  need,  and  their  influence  led 
the  masses  with  them.     Out  of  these  conferences  arose  the 
senates  of  elders  found  in  the  ancient  states  of    Semitic 
and  Aryan  antiquity  alike.     The   kingship,  again,  as    we 
find  it  in  most  antique  states,  appears  to  have  ordinarily 
arisen  in   the   way   which   is   so  well    illustrated    by  the 
history  of  Israel.      In  time   of  war  an  individual  leader  is 


LECT.  II.  SEMITIC    COMMUNITIES.  35 

indispensable  ;  in  a  time  of  prolonged  danger  the  temporary 
authority  of  an  approved  captain  easily  passes  into  the 
lifelong  leadership  at  home  as  well  as  in  the  field,  which 
was  exercised  by  such  a  judge  as  Gideon ;  and  at  length  the 
advantages  of  having  a  permanent  head,  both  as  a  leader 
of  the  army  and  as  a  restraint  on  the  perennial  feuds  and 
jealousies  of  clans  that  constantly  threaten  the  solidity  of 
the  state,  are  recognised  in  the  institution  of  the  kingship, 
which  again  tends  to  become  hereditary,  as  in  the  case  of 
the  house  of  David,  simply  because  the  king's  house 
naturally  becomes  greater  and  richer  than  other  houses, 
and  so  better  able  to  sustain  the  burden  of  power. 

Up  to  this  point  the  progress  of  society  was  much  alike 
in  the  East  and  in  the  West,  and  the  progress  of  religion, 
as  we  shall  see  in  the  sequel,  followed  that  of  society  in 
general.  But  while  in  Greece  and  Eome  the  early  period 
of  the  kings  lies  in  the  far  background  of  tradition,  and 
only  forms  the  starting-point  of  the  long  development  with 
which  the  historian  of  these  countries  is  mainly  occupied, 
the  independent  evolution  of  Semitic  society  was  arrested 
at  an  early  stage.  In  the  case  of  the  nomadic  Arabs,  shut 
up  in  their  wildernesses  of  rock  and  sand,  nature  herself 
barred  the  way  of  progress.  The  life  of  the  desert  does 
not  furnish  the  material  conditions  for  permanent  advance 
beyond  the  tribal  system,  and  we  find  that  the  religious 
development  of  the  Arabs  was  proportionally  retarded,  so 
that  at  the  advent  of  Islam  the  ancient  heathenism,  like 
the  ancient  tribal  structure  of  society,  had  become  effete 
without  having  ever  ceased  to  be  barbarous. 

The  northern  Semites,  on  the  other  hand,  whose  progress 
up  to  the  eighth  century  before  Christ  certainly  did  not 
lag  behind  that  of  the  Greeks,  were  deprived  of  political 
independence,  and  so  cut  short  in  their  natural  develop- 
ment, by  the  advance  from  the  Tigris  to  the  Mediterranean 


36  THE   NATIONS    AND  lect.  ii, 

of  the  great  Assyrian  monarchs,  who,  drawing  from  the 
rich  and  broad  alluvium  of  the  Two  Eivers  resources  which 
none  of  their  neighbours  could  rival,  went  on  from  conquest 
to  conquest  till  all  the  small  states  of  Syria  and  Palestine 
had  gone  down  before  them.  The  Assyrians  were  con- 
querors of  the  most  brutal  and  destructive  kind,  and 
wherever  they  came  the  whole  structure  of  ancient  society 
was  dissolved.  From  this  time  onwards  the  difference  between 
the  Syrian  or  Palestinian  and  the  Greek  was  not  one  of 
race  alone,  it  was  the  difference  between  a  free  citizen  and 
the  slave  of  an  Oriental  despotism.  Eeligion  as  well  as 
civil  society  was  profoundly  affected  by  the  catastrophe  of 
the  old  free  communities  of  the  northern  Semitic  lands ; 
the  society  of  one  and  the  same  religion  was  no  longer 
identical  with  the  state,  and  the  old  solidarity  of  civil  and 
religious  life  continued  to  exist  only  in  a  modified  form. 
It  is  not  therefore  surprising  that  from  the  eighth  century 
onwards  the  history  of  Semitic  religion  runs  a  very 
different  course  from  that  which  we  observe  on  the  other 
side  of  the  Mediterranean. 

All  this  will  become  clearer  as  we  proceed,  and  need 
not  detain  us  now.  For  the  present  we  are  concerned 
with  the  first  principles  of  Semitic  religion,  which  must  be 
studied  as  they  exhibit  themselves  in  the  early  ages  of  the 
Semitic  states,  before  their  free  development  was  arrested 
by  the  hand  of  foreign  conquest,  and  before  the  history  of 
the  East  had  been  forced  into  the  channels  which  make 
its  subsequent  course  so  unlike  the  history  of  the  West. 

The  ancient  Semitic  communities  were  small,  and  were 
separated  from  each  other  by  incessant  feuds.  Hence, 
on  the  principle  of  solidarity  between  gods  and  their 
worshippers,  the  particularism  characteristic  of  political 
society  could  not  but  reappear  in  the  sphere  of  religion. 
In  the  same  measure  as  the  god  of  a  clan  or  town  had 


LECT.   II. 


THEIR   GODS.  37 


indisputable  claim  to  the  reverence  and  service  of  the 
community  to  which  he  belonged,  he  was  necessarily 
an  enemy  to  their  enemies  and  a  stranger  to  those  to 
whom  they  were  strangers.  Of  this  there  are  sufficient 
evidences  in  the  way  in  which  the  Old  Testament  sjDcaks 
about  the  relation  of  the  nations  to  their  gods.  When 
David  in  the  bitterness  of  his  heart  complains  of  those 
who  "  have  driven  him  out  from  connection  with  the 
heritage  of  Jehovah,"  he  represents  them  as  saying  to 
him,  "  Go,  serve  other  gods."  ^  In  driving  him  to  seek 
refuge  in  another  land  and  another  nationality,  they 
compel  him  to  change  his  religion,  for  a  man's  religion  is 
part  of  his  political  connection.  "  Thy  sister,"  says  Naomi 
to  Euth,  "is  gone  back  unto  her  people  and  unto  her 
gods  ; "  and  Ruth  replies,  "  Thy  people  shall  be  my  people, 
and  thy  God  my  God  :  "  ^  the  change  of  nationality  involves 
a  change  of  cult.  Jeremiah,  in  the  full  consciousness  of  the 
falsehood  of  all  religions  except  that  of  Israel,  remarks  that 
no  nation  changes  its  gods  although  they  be  no  gods :  ^  a 
nation's  worship  remains  as  constant  as  its  political 
identity.  The  Book  of  Deuteronomy,  speaking  in  like 
manner  from  the  standpoint  of  monotheism,  reconciles  the 
sovereignty  of  Jehovah  with  the  actual  facts  of  heathenism, 
by  saying  that  He  has  "  allotted "  the  various  objects  of 
false  worship  "  unto  all  nations  under  the  whole  heaven."  * 
The  "allotment"  of  false  gods  among  the  nations,  as 
property  is  allotted,  expresses  with  precision  the  idea  that 
each  god  had  his  own  determinate  circle  of  worshippers, 
to  whom  he  stood  in  a  peculiar  and  exclusive  relation. 

The  exclusiveness  of  which  I  have  just  spoken  naturally 
finds  its  most  pronounced  expression  in  the  share  taken 
by  the  gods  in  the  feuds  and  wars  of  their  worshippers. 
The  enemies  of  the  god  and  the  enemies  of  his  people  are 

M  Sam.  xxvi.  19.         ^  gyt-jj  i_  14  .,^^,  'Jer.  ii.  11.         *  Dcut.  iv.  19. 


38  THE    NATIONS  LECT.  li. 

identical ;  even  in  the  Old  Testament  "  the  enemies  of 
Jehovah "  are  originally  nothing  else  than  the  enemies 
of  Israel/  In  battle  each  god  fights  for  his  own  people, 
and  to  his  aid  success  is  ascribed ;  Chemosh  gives  victory 
to  Moab,  and  Asshur  to  Assyria;^  in  Arabia  the  tribal 
war-cry  invokes  the  name  of.  the  god ;  in  Palestine  his 
image  or  symbol  accompanies  the  host  to  battle.  When 
the  ark  was  brought  into  the  camp  of  Israel,  the  Philistines 
said,  "  Gods  are  come  into  the  camp ;  who  can  deliver  us 
from  the  hand  of  these  mighty  gods  ?  "  ^  They  judged  from 
their  own  practice,  for  when  David  defeated  them  at  Baal- 
Perazim,  part  of  the  booty  consisted  in  their  idols  which 
had  been  carried  into  the  field.*  Similarly  an  Arabic 
poet  says,  "  Yaghiith  went  forth  with  us  against  Morad  ;  "  ^ 
that  is,  the  image  of  the  god  Yaghiith  was  carried  into 
the  fray.  You  observe  how  literal  and  realistic  was  the 
conception  of  the  part  taken  by  the  deity  in  the  wars  of 
his  worshippers. 

When  the  gods  of  the  several  Semitic  communities 
took  part  in  this  way  in  the  ancestral  feuds  of  their 
worshippers,  it  was  impossible  for  an  individual  to  change 
his  religion  without  changing  his  nationality,  and  a  whole 
community  could  hardly  change  its  religion  at  all  without 
being  absorbed  into  another  stock  or  nation.  Pteligious 
like  political  ties  were  transmitted  from  father  •  to  son ; 
for  a  man  could  not  choose  a  new  god  at  will ;  the  gods  of 
his  fathers  were  the  only  deities  on  whom  he  could  count 
as  friendly  and  ready  to  accept  his  homage,  unless  he 
forswore  his  own  kindred  and  was  received  into  a  new 
circle  of  civil  as  well  as  religious  life.     In  the  old  times 


^  1  Sam.  XXX.  26,  "the  spoil  of  the  enemies  of  Jehovah  ; "  Judg.  v.  31. 
^  See  the  inscription  of  King  Mesha  on  the  so-called  Moabite  stone,  and 
the  Assyrian  inscriptions  passim. 

=»  1  Sam.  iv.  7  sqq.  *  2  Sam.  v.  21.  *  Yaciit,  iv.  1023. 


LECT.    11. 


AND    THEIR   GODS.  39 


1 


hardly  any  but  outlaws  changed  their  religion ;  ceremonies 
of  initiation,  by  which  a  man  was  received  into  a  new 
religious  circle,  became  important,  as  we  shall  see  by  and 
by,  only  after  the  breaking  up  of  the  old  political  life  of 
the  small  Semitic  commonwealths. 

On  the  other  hand,  all  social  fusion  between  two 
communities  tended  to  bring  about  a  rehgious  fusion  also. 
This  might  take  place  in  two  ways.  Sometimes  two  gods 
were  themselves  fused  into  one,  as  when  the  mass  of  the 
Israelites  in  their  local  worship  of  Jehovah  identified  Hin 
with  the  Baalim  of  the  Canaanite  high  places,  and  carried 
over  into  His  worship  the  ritual  of  the  Canaanite  shrines, 
not  deeming  that  in  so  doing  they  were  less  truly  Jehovah 
worshippers  than  before.  This  process  was  greatly  facili- 
tated by  the  extreme  similarity  in  the  attributes  ascribed 
to  different  local  or  tribal  gods,  and  the  frequent  identity 
of  the  divine  titles.^  One  Baal  hardly  differed  from  another, 
except  in  being  connected  with  a  different  kindred  or  a 
different  place,  and  when  the  kindreds  were  fused  by 
intermarriage,  or  lived  together  in  one  village  on  a  footing 
of  social  amity,  there  was  nothing  to  keep  their  gods 
permanently  distinct.  In  other  cases,  where  the  several 
deities  brought  together  by  the  union  of  their  worshippers 
into  one  state  were  too  distinct  to  lose  their  individuality, 
they  continued  to  be  worshipped  side  by  side  as  allied 
divine  powers,  and  it  is  to  this  kind  of  process  that  we 

1  It  will  appear  in  the  sequel  tliat  the  worship  of  the  greater  Semitic 
deities  was  closely  associated  with  the  reverence  which  all  primitive  pastoral 
tribes  pay  to  their  flocks  and  herds.  To  a  tribe  whose  herds  consisted  of 
kine  and  oxen,  the  cow  and  the  ox  were  sacred  beings,  which  in  the  oldest 
times  were  never  killed  or  eaten  except  sacrificially.  The  tribal  deities 
themselves  were  conceived  as  closely  akin  to  the  sacred  species  of  domestic 
animals,  and  their  images  were  often  made  in  tlie  likeness  of  steers  or  heifers 
in  cow-keeping  tribes,  or  of  rams  and  ewes  in  shepherd  tribes.  It  is  easy  to 
see  how  this  facilitated  the  fusion  of  tribal  worships,  and  how  deities 
originally  distinct  might  come  to  be  identified  on  account  of  the  similarity 
of  their  images  and  of  the  sacrifices  ofl'ered  to  them. 


40  POLYTHEISM.  lect.  ir. 

must  apparently  ascribe  the  development  of  a  Semitic 
pantheon  or  polytheistic  system.  A  pantheon,  or  organised 
commonwealth  of  gods,  such  as  we  find  in  the  state 
religion  of  Egypt  or  in  the  Homeric  poems,  is  not  the 
primitive  type  of  heathenism,  and  no  trace  of  such  a 
thing  appears  in  the  oldest  documents  of  the  religion 
of  the  smaller  Semitic  communities.  The  old  Semites 
believed  in  the  existence  of  many  gods,  for  they  accepted 
as  real  the  gods  of  their  enemies  as  well  as  their  own,  but 
they  did  not  worship  the  strange  gods  from  whom  they 
had  no  favour  to  expect,  and  on  whom  their  gifts  and 
offerings  would  have  been  thrown  away.  When  every 
small  community  was  on  terms  of  frequent  hostility  with 
all  its  neighbours,  the  formation  of  a  polytheistic  system 
was  impossible.  Each  group  had  its  own  god,  or  perhaps 
a  god  and  a  goddess,  to  whom  the  other  gods  bore  no 
relation  whatever.  It  was  only  as  the  small  groups 
coalesced  into  larger  unities,  that  a  society  and  kinship 
of  many  gods  began  to  be  formed,  on  the  model  of  the 
alliance  or  fusion  of  their  respective  worshippers ;  and 
indeed  the  chief  part  in  the  development  of  a  systematic 
hierarchy  or  commonwealth  of  Semitic  deities  is  due  to 
the  Babylonians  and  Assyrians,  among  whom  the  labours  of 
statesmen  to  build  up  a  consolidated  empire  out  of  a  multi- 
tude of  local  communities,  originally  independent,  were 
seconded  by  the  efforts  of  the  priests  to  give  a  correspond- 
ing unity  of  scheme  to  the  multiplicity  of  local  worships. 

Thus  far  we  have  looked  only  at  the  general  fact,  that 
in  a  Semitic  community  men  and  their  gods  formed  a 
social  and  political  as  well  as  a  religious  whole.  But  to 
make  our  conceptions  more  concrete  we  must  consider 
what  place  in  this  whole  was  occupied  by  the  divine 
element  of  the  social  partnership.  And  here  we  find  that 
the  two  leading  conceptions  of  the  relation  of  the  god  to 


LECT.  II.  FATHERHOOD    OF    THE   GODS.  41 

his  people  are  those  of  fatherhood  and  of  kingship.     We  f 
have  learned  to  look  on  Semitic  society  as  built  up  on  two  !j 
bases — on  kinship,  which  is  the  foundation  of  the  system  of  [ 
clans  or  gentes,  and  on  the   union  of  kins,  living  inter- 
mingled or  side  by  side,  and  bound  together  by  common 
interests,  which  is  the  foundation  of  the  state.     We  now  see 
that  the  clan  and  the  state  are  both  represented  in  religion  : 
as  father  the  god  belongs  to  the  family  or  clan,  as  king 
he  belongs  to  the  state ;  and  in  each  sphere  of  the  social 
order  he  holds  the  position  of  highest  dignity.      Both  these 
conceptions  deserve  to  be  looked  at  and  illustrated  in  some 
detail. 

The  relation  of  a  father  to  his  children  has  a  moral  as 
well  as  a  physical  aspect,  and  each  of  these  must  be  taken 
into  account  in  considering  what  the  fatherhood  of  the 
tribal  deity  meant  in  ancient  religion.  In  the  physical 
aspect  the  father  is  the  being  to  whom  the  child  owes  his 
life,  and  through  whom  he  traces  kinship  with  the  other 
members  of  his  family  or  clan.  The  antique  conception 
of  kinship  is  participation  in  one  blood,  which  passes  from 
parent  to  child  and  circulates  in  the  veins  of  every  member 
of  the  family.  The  unity  of  the  family  or  clan  is  view^ed 
as  a  physical  unity,  for  the  blood  is  the  life, — an  idea 
familiar  to  us  from  the  Old  Testament, — and  it  is  the  same 
blood  and  therefore  the  same  life  that  is  shared  by  every; 
descendant  of  the  common  ancestor.  The  idea  that  the 
race  has  a  life  of  its  own,  of  which  individual  lives  are  only 
parts,  is  expressed  even  more  clearly  by  picturing  the  race 
as  a  tree,  of  which  the  ancestor  is  the  root  or  stem  and 
the  descendants  the  branches.  This  figure  is  used  by  all 
the  Semites,  and  is  very  common  both  in  the  Old  Testament 
and  in  the  Arabian  poets. 

The  moral  aspect  of  fatherhood,  again,  lies  in  the  social 
relations   and    obligations   which  flow   from   the   physical 


42  THE    FATHEEHOOD  lect.  ii. 

relationship — in  the  sanctity  of  the  tie  of  blood  which 
binds  together  the  whole  family,  and  in  the  particular 
modification  of  this  tie  in  the  case  of  parent  and  child,  the 
parent  protecting  and  nourishing  the  child,  while  the  child 
owes  obedience  and  service  to  his  parent. 

In  Christianity,  and  already  in  the  spiritual  religion  of 
the  Hebrews,  the  idea  of  divine  fatherhood  is  entirely 
dissociated  from  the  physical  basis  of  natural  fatherhood. 
Man  was  created  in  the  image  of  God,  but  he  was  not 
begotten  ;  God-sonship  is  not  a  thing  of  nature  but  a  thing 
of  grace.  In  the  Old  Testament  Israel  is  Jehovah's  son, 
and  Jehovah  is  his  father  who  created  him ;  ^  but  this 
creation  is  not  a  physical  act,  it  refers  to  the  series  of 
gracious  deeds  by  which  Israel  was  shaped  into  a  nation. 
And  so,  though  it  may  be  said  of  the  Israelites  as  a  whole 
"  Ye  are  the  children  of  Jehovah  your  God,"  ^  this  sonship 
is  national,  not  personal,  and  the  individual  Israelite  has 
not  the  right  to  call  himself  Jehovah's  son. 

But  in  heathen  religions  the  fatherhood  of  the  gods  is 
physical  fatherhood.  Among  the  Greeks,  for  example,  the 
idea  that  the  gods  fashioned  men  out  of  clay,  as  potters 
fashion  images,  is  relatively  modern.  The  older  conception 
is  that  the  races  of  men  have  gods  for  their  ancestors,  or 
are  the  children  of  the  earth,  the  common  mother  of  gods 
and  men,  so  that  men  are  really  of  the  stock  or  kin  of  the 
gods.^  That  the  same  conception  was  familiar  to  the  older 
Semites  appears  from  the  Bible.  Jeremiah  describes 
idolaters  as  saying  to  a  stock.  Thou  art  my  father ;  and  to  a 
stone.  Thou  hast  brought  me  forth.*  In  the  ancient  poem, 
Num.  xxi.  29,  the  Moabites  are  called  the  sons  and 
daughters  of  Chemosh,  and  at  a  much  more  recent  date  the 

^  Hosea  xi.  1  ;  Deut.  xxxii.  6.  ^  Deut.  xiv.  1. 

^  See  details  and  references  in  Preller- Robert,  Oriechische  Mylhol.  (1887) 
i.  78  sqq.  *  Jer.  ii.  27. 


LECT.    II. 


OF    THE    GODS.  43 


prophet  Malachi  calls  a  heathen  woman  "  the  daugliter  of 
a  strange  god."  ^  These  phrases  are  doubtless  accommoda- 
tions to  the  language  which  the  heathen  neighbours  of 
Israel  used  about  themselves ;  they  belong  to  an  age  when 
society  in  Syria  and  Palestine  was  still  mainly  organised 
on  the  tribal  system,  so  that  each  clan,  or  even  each  complex 
of  clans  forming  a  small  independent  people,  traced  back  its 
origin  to  a  great  first  father ;  and  they  indicate  that,  just 
as  in  Greece,  this  father  or  apxvj^'^V'i  ol  the  race  was 
commonly  identified  with  the  god  of  the  race.  With  this 
it  accords  that  in  the  judgment  of  most  modern  enquirers 
several  names  of  deities  appear  in  the  old  genealogies  of 
nations  in  the  Book  of  Genesis.  Edom,  for  example,  the 
progenitor  of  the  Edomites,  was  identified  by  the  Hebrews 
with  Esau  the  brother  of  Jacob,  but  to  the  heathen  he  was 
a  god,  as  appears  from  the  theophorous  proper  name 
Obededom,  "  worshipper  of  Edom."  ^     The  remains  of  such 

1  Mai.  ii.  11. 

-  Bathgen,  Beitrage  zur  Semitlsclien  Beligionsg.  p.  10,  objects  that  not 
all  names  compounded  with  12y  are  theophorous.  And  it  is  true  that  on 
the  Nabat;uaii  inscriptioiis  we  hnd  names  of  this  form  in  wliich  the  second 
element  is  the  name  of  a  king,  but  this  is  in  a  state  of  society  where  the 
king  was  revered  as  at  least  quasi-divhie,  and  where  the  apotheosis  of  dead 
kings  was  not  unknown.  Cf.  Wellh.  p.  2  sq.;  Euting,  Nabat.  Inschr.  ]). 
32  sq. ;  and  especially  Clermont-Ganneau,  Rec.  d'ArcMol.  Or.  i.  39  sqq.  What 
DIK  means  in  C.  I.  S.  pt.  i.  pp.  365,  367,  I  do  not,  in  the  present  state 
of  the  evidence,  presume  to  guess  ;  but  I  venture  to  say  that  m^<  pO 
cannot  in  the  context  mean  "  king  of  men." 

As  examples  of  names  in  the  genealogies  of  Genesis  which  reappear  in 
other  quarters  as  names  of  gods,  I  have  elsewhere  adduced  Uz  (Gen.  xxii. 
21,  xxxvi.  28  ;  LXX,  ii?,  ill,  "J ;  and  in  Job  i.  1,  Au<r,T„)  =  ' Ami  (Kimhip, 
261)  and  Yeush  (Gen.  xxxvi.  14)  =  Yaghuth.  To  the  second  of  these  identi- 
fications, objections  of  much  force  have  been  raised  by  Lagarde,  MUth.  ii.  77, 
Bildung  der  Nomina,  p.  124.  The  other  has  been  criticised  by  Nbldcke, 
ZDMG.  xl.  184,  but  his  remarks  do  not  seem  to  me  to  be  conclusive. 
That  the  Arabian  god  is  a  mere  personification  of  Time  is  a  hard  saying,  and 
the  view  that  'audo  or  'auda  in  the  line  of  al-A*sha  is  derived  from  the 
name  of  the  god,  which  Noldeke  finds  to  be  "  doch  etwas  bizarr,"  has  at 
least  the  authority  of  Ibn  al-Kalbi  as  cited  by  Jauhari,  and  more  clearly  iu 
the  Limn. 


44  KINSHIP    OF 


LECT.    II. 


mythology  are  naturally  few  in  records  which  have  come  to 
us  not  from  the  heathen  tribes  themselves,  but  through  the 
monotheistic  Hebrews.  On  the  other  hand,  the  extant 
fragments  of  Phcenician  and  Babylonian  cosmogonies  date 
from  a  time  when  tribal  religion  and  the  connection  of 
individual  gods  with  particular  kindreds  was  forgotten  or 
had  fallen  into  the  background.  But  in  a  generalised  form 
the  notion  that  men  are  the  offspring  of  the  gods  still  held 
its  ground.  In  the  Phoenician  cosmogony  of  Philo  Byblius 
it  does  so  in  a  confused  shape,  due  to  the  author's  euhemer- 
ism,  that  is,  to  his  theory  that  deities  are  nothing  more 
than  deified  men  who  had  been  great  benefactors  to  their 
species.  But  euhemerism  itself  can  arise,  as  an  explanation 
of  popular  religion,  only  where  the  old  gods  are  regarded 
as  akin  to  men,  and  where  therefore  the  deification  of 
human  benefactors  does  not  involve  any  such  patent 
absurdity  as  on  our  way  of  thinking.  Again  in  the 
Chaldsean  legend  preserved  by  Berosus,^  the  belief  that 
men  are  of  the  blood  of  the  gods  is  expressed  in  a  form  too 
crude  not  to  be  very  ancient.  Not  only  men  but  animals 
are  said  to  have  been  formed  out  of  clay  mingled  with  the 
blood  of  a  decapitated  deity.  Here  we  have  a  blood-kinship 
not  only  of  gods  and  men,  but  of  gods  men  and  animals,  a 
belief  which  has  points  of  contact  with  the  lowest  forms  of 
savage  religion,  and  will  engage  our  attention  again  at  a 
later  stage  of  the  enquiry. 

It  is  obvious  that  the  idea  of  a  physical  affinity  between 
the  gods  and  men  in  general  is  more  modern  than  that  of 
affinity  between  particular  gods  and  their  worshippers  ;  and 
the  sur\dval  of  the  idea  in  a  generalised  form,  after  men's 
religion  had  ceased  to  be  strictly  dependent  on  tribal  con- 
nection, is  in  itself  a  proof  that  belief  in  their  descent  from 
the  blood  of  the  gods  was  not  confined  to  this  or  that  clan, 
1  MUller,  Fr.  Hist.  Gr.  ii.  497  sq. 


LECT.  II.  GODS   AND    MEN.  45 

but  was  a  widespread  feature  in  the  old  tribal  religions  of 
the  Semites,  too  deeply  interwoven  with  the  whole  system 
of  faith  and  practice  to  be  altogetlier  thrown  aside  when 
the  community  of  tlie  same  worship  ceased  to  be  purely 
one  of  kinship. 

That  this  was  really  the  case  will  be  seen  more  clearly 
when  we  come  to  speak  of  the  common  features  of  Semitic 
ritual,  and  especially  of  the  ritual  use  of  blood,  which  is 
the  primitive  symbol  of  kinship.  Meantime  let  us  observe 
that  there  is  yet  another  form  in  which  the  idea  of  divine 
descent  survived  the  breaking  up  of  the  tribal  system 
among  the  northern  Semites.  When  this  took  place,  the 
worshippers  of  one  god,  being  now  men  of  different 
kindreds,  united  by  political  bonds  instead  of  bonds  of 
blood,  could  not  be  all  thought  of  as  children  of  the  god. 
He  was  no  longer  their  father  but  their  king.  But  as 
the  deities  of  a  mixed  community  were  in  their  origin  the 
old  deities  of  tlie  more  influential  families,  the  members  of 
these  families  might  still  trace  their  origin  to  the  family 
god,  and  find  in  this  pedigree  matter  of  aristocratic  pride. 
Thus  royal  and  noble  houses  among  the  Greeks  long  con- 
tinued to  trace  their  stem  back  to  a  divine  forefather,  and 
the  same  thing  appears  among  the  Semites.  The  testimony 
of  Virgil  and  Silius  Italicus,^  that  tlie  royal  house  of  Tyre 
and  the  noblest  families  of  Carthage  claimed  descent  from 
the  Tyrian  Baal,  is  confirmed  by  the  name  Abibaal,  "  my 
father  is  Baal,"  borne  by  the  father  of  Solomon's  ally, 
Hiram.^     Similarly    among    the    Arama?an    sovereigns    of 

1  jEn.  i.  729  ;  Punica  i.  87. 

^  The  same  name  appears  in  C.  /.  S.  Nos.  378,  40.'5.  In  the  former  case 
it  is  the  name  of  a  woman,  "a handmaid  of  the  gods,"  whose  mother  is  named 
but  not  her  father.  It  is  possible  that  the  mother  was  a  cedesha  or  temple- 
prostitute,  and  that  the  god  was  regarded  as  the  father  of  the  children  of 
religious  prostitution.  Cf.  ibid.  Nos.  253,  256,  and  Herod,  i.  181  ,sfj., 
compared  (as  regards  the  Theban  case)  with  Strabo,  xvii.  1.  46,  p.  817.     As 

regards  mn*L:'>»S,  C.  I.  S.  No.  3,  1.   M,  it  is  doubtful  whether  it  is  not 


46  KINSHIP   OF 


LECT.    II. 


Damascus,  mentioned  in  the  Bible,  we  find  more  than  one 
Ben-hadad,  "  son  of  the  god  Hadad  ;  "  while  among  the  later 
Aramaeans  names  like  Barlaha,  "  son  of  God,"  Barba'shmin, 
"  son  of  the  Lord  of  Heaven,"  Barate,  "  son  of  Ate,"  are  not 
uncommon.^ 

The  belief  that  all  the  members  of  a  elan  are  sons  and 
daughters  of  its  god,  might  naturally  be  expected  to  survive 
longest  in  Arabia,  where  the  tribe  was  never  lost  in  the 
state,  and  kinship  continued  down  to  the  time  of  Mohammed 
to  be  the  one  sacred  bond  of  social  unity.  In  point  of 
fact  many  Arabian  tribes  bear  the  names  of  gods,  or  of 
celestial  bodies  worshipped  as  gods,  and  their  members  are 
styled  "  sons  of  Hobal,"  "  sons  of  the  Full  Moon,"  and  the 
like.^  There  is  no  good  reason  for  refusing  to  explain 
these  names,  or  at  least  the  older  ones  among  them,  on 
the  analogy  of  the  similar  clan-names  found  among  the 
northern  Semites ;  for  Arabian  ritual,  as  well  as  that  of 
Palestine  and  Syria,  involves  in  its  origin  a  belief  in  the 
kinship  of  the  god  and  his  worshippers.  In  the  later  ages 
of  Arabian  heathenism,  however,  of  which  alone  we  have 
any  full  accounts,  religion  had  come  to  be  very  much  dis- 
sociated  from    tribal   feeling,   mainly,   it    would  seem,   in 

equivalent  to  mnt^J?  DnX,  "handmaid  of  Astarte,"  for  we  find  also  |DE^'NOX. 
The  name  pySHl,  "daughter  of  Baal,"  is  not  quite  certain  in  any  of  the 
three  passages  quoted  by  Levy,  Phon.  Worth,  s.v.  Compare,  further,  the 
names  nDpDPI,  n^pJDnn,  "brother,  sister  of  the  Queen  (Astarte),"  n^fin, 
C.  I.  S.  221,  430  ;  also  Din,  Hiram,  and  in  Hebrew,  ^XTl,  HTIX,  etc. 

•  For  the  god-souship  of  Assyrian  monarchs,  see  Tiele,  Bnbylonisch-Assyr. 
Gesch.  p.  492. 

2  See  Kinship,  p.  205  sqq.,  and  Wellhausen,  Heidenthum,  p.  4  i^qq.,  who 
explains  all  such  names  as  due  to  omission  of  the  prefix  'Abel  or  the  like. 
In  some  cases  this  probably  is  so,  but  it  must  not  be  assumed  that  because 
the  same  tribe  is  called  (for  example)  'Auf  or  'Abd  'Auf  indifferently,  Banu 
'Auf  is  a  contraction  of  Banu  'Abd  'Auf.  It  is  quite  logical  that  the  sons 
of  'Auf  form  the  collective  body  of  his  worshippers  ;  cf.  Mai.  iii.  17  ;  and 
for  the  collective  use  of 'a6c?,  Hamdsa,  p.  312,  first  verse.  Personal  names 
indicating  god-sonship  are  lacking  in  Arabia ;  see  on  supposed  Sabsean 
examples  ZDMG.  xxxvii.  15. 


LECT.    11. 


GODS    AND  MEN.  47 


consequence  of  the  extensive  migrations  which  took  place 
in  the  first  centuries  of  our  era,  and  carried  tribes  far  away 
from  the  fixed  sanctuaries  of  the  gods  of  their  fathers.' 
Men  forgot  their  old  worship,  and  as  the  names  of  gods 
were  also  used  as  individual  proper  names,  the  divine 
ancestor,  even  before  Islam,  had  generally  sunk  to  the  rank 
of  a  mere  man.  But  though  the  later  Arabs  worshipped 
gods  that  were  not  the  gods  of  their  fathers,  and  tribes  of 
alien  blood  were  often  found  gathered  together  on  festival 
occasions  at  the  great  pilgrim  shrines,  there  are  many 
evidences  that  all  Arabic  deities  were  originally  the  gods 
of  particular  kins,  and  that  the  bond  of  religion  was 
originally  co-extensive  with  the  bond  of  blood. 

A  main  proof  of  this  lies  in  the  fact,  that  the  duties  of 
blood  were  the  only  duties  of  absolute  and  indefeasible 
sanctity.  The  Arab  warrior  in  the  ages  immediately  pre- 
ceding Islam  was  very  deficient  in  religion  in  the  ordinary 
sense  of  the  word ;  he  was  little  occupied  with  the  things 
of  the  gods  and  negligent  in  matters  of  ritual  worship. 
Ikit  he  had  a  truly  religious  reverence  for  his  clan,  and  a 
kinsman's  blood  was  to  him  a  thing  holy  and  inviolable. 
This  apparent  paradox  becomes  at  once  intelligible  when 
we  view  it  in  the  light  of  the  antique  conception,  that  the 
god  and  his  worshippers  make  up  a  society  in  which  the 
same  character  of  sanctity  is  impressed  on  the  relations  of 
the  worshippers  to  one  another  as  on  their  relations  to  their 
god.  The  original  religious  society  was  the  kindred  group, 
and  all  the  duties  of  kinship  were  part  of  religion.  And  so 
even  when  the  clan-god  had  fallen  into  the  background  and 
was  little  remembered,  the  type  of  a  clan-religion  was  still 
maintained  in  the  enduring  sanctity  of  the  kindred  bond.^ 

'  See  Wellhausen  ut  supra,  p.  182  sq.,  ami  compare  1  Sam.  xxvi.  19. 

2  When  the  oracle  at  Tabala  forbade  tlie  poet  Iniraulcais  to  make  war  on 
the  slayers  of  his  father,  he  broke  the  lot  ami  dashed  the  jiieces  in  the  face 
of  the  god,  exclaiming  with  a  gross  and  insulting  expletive,    "If  it   had 


48  KINSHIP    OF 


LECT.    11. 


Again,  the  primitive  connection  of  religion  with  kindred 
is  attested  by  the  existence  of  priesthoods  confined  to  men 
of  one  clan  or  family,  which  in  many  cases  was  of  a 
dififerent  blood  from  the  mass  of  the  worshippers.  Cases 
of  this  sort  are  common,  not  only  among  the  Arabs,^  but 
among  the  other  Semites  also,  and  generally  throughout 
the  ancient  world.  In  such  cases  the  priestly  clan  may 
often  represent  the  original  kindred  group  which  was  once 
in  exclusive  possession  of  the  sacra  of  the  god,  and  con- 
tinued to  administer  them  after  worshippers  from  without 
were  admitted  to  the  religion. 

And,  further,  it  will  appear  when  we  come  to  the 
subject  of  sacrifice,  that  when  tribes  of  different  blood 
worshipped  at  the  same  sanctuary  and  adored  the  same 
god,  they  yet  held  themselves  apart  from  one  another  and 
did  not  engage  in  any  common  act  that  united  them  in 
religious  fellowship.  The  circle  of  worship  was  still  the 
kin,  though  the  deity  worshipped  was  not  of  the  kin,  and 
the  only  way  in  which  two  kindreds  could  form  a  religious 
fusion  was  by  a  covenant  ceremony,  in  which  it  was 
symbolically  set  forth  that  they  were  no  longer  twain,  but 
of  one  blood.  It  is  clear,  therefore,  that  among  the  Arabs 
the  circle  of  religious  solidarity  was  originally  the  group 
of  kinsmen,  and  it  needs  no  proof  that,  this  being  so,  the 
CTod  himself  must  have  been  conceived  as  united  to  his 
worshippers  by  the  bond  of  blood,  as  their  great  kinsman, 
or  more  specifically  as  their  great  ancestor. 

been  tliy  father  that  was  killed,  thou  wouldst  not  have  refused  nie 
vengeance."  The  respect  for  the  sanctity  of  blood  overrides  respect  for  a 
god  who,  by  taking  no  interest  in  the  poet's  blood-feud,  has  shown  that  he 
has  no  feeling  of  kindred  for  the  murdered  man  and  his  son.  Imraulcais's 
act  does  not  show  that  he  was  impious,  but  only  that  kinship  was  the 
principle  of  his  religion.  That  with  such  principles  he  consulted  the  oracle 
of  a  strange  god  at  all,  is  perhaps  to  be  explained  by  the  fact  that  his  army 
was  a  miscellaneous  band  of  hirelings  and  broken  men  of  various  tribes. 
1  Wellhausen,  p.  129. 


LECT.   II. 


GODS    AND    MEN.  49 


It  cannot  be  too  strongly  insisted  on  that  the  idea  of 
kinsliip  between  gods  and  men  was  originally  taken  in  a 
purely  physical  sense.      It  is  often  said  that  the  original 
Semitic    conception    of     the     godhead    was    abstract    and 
transcendental ;  that  while  Aryan  religion  with  its  poetic 
mythology  drew  the  gods  down  into  the  sphere  of  nature 
and   of    hnuum    life,   S(Mnitic   religion  always    showed   an 
opposite  tendency,  that  it  sought  to  remove  the  gods  as  far 
as  possible   from  man,  and   even  contained   within   itself 
from  the  first  the  seeds  of  an  abstract  deism.      According 
to  this  view  the  anthropomorphisms  of    Semitic  religion, 
that  is,  all  expressions  which  in  their  literal  sense  imply 
that  the  gods  have  a  physical  nature  cognate  to  that  of 
man,  are  explained  away  as  mere  allegory,  and  it  is  urged, 
in  proof  of  the  fundamental  distinction  between  the  Aryan 
and  Semitic  conceptions  of  the  divine  nature,  that  myths 
like   those  of   the  Aryans,    in   which   gods  act   like  men, 
mingle  witli   men,   and    in    fact  live  a  common  life  with 
mankind,  have  little  or  no  place  in  Semitic  religion.     But 
all  this  is  mere  unfounded  assumption.     It  is  true  that  the 
remains  of  ancient  Semitic  mythology  are  not  very  nume- 
rous; but  mythology  cannot  be  preserved  without  literature, 
and  an   early   literature   of  Semitic   heathenism   does  not 
exist.      The  one  exception  is  the  cuneiform   literature  of 
Babylonia,    and    in    it    we   find   fragments    of    a    copious 
mythology.     It  is  true,  also,  that  there  is  not  much  myth- 
ology in  the  poetry  of  heathen  Arabia,  but  Arabian  poetry 
has  little  to  do  with  religion  at  all ;   it  dates  from  the 
extreme  decadence  of  the  old  heathenism,  and  is  preserved 
to  us   only   in    the    collections    formed    by   Mohammedan 
scholars,  who  were  careful  to  avoid  or  obliterate  as  far  as 
possible   the  traces  of    their  fathers'  idolatry.     That    the 
Semites  never  had  a  mythological  epic  poetry  comparable 
to  that  of  the  Greeks  is  admitted,  but  the  character  of  the 

D 


50  KINSHIP    OF  LECT.  11. 

literary  genius  of  the  Semites,  which  is  deficient  in  plastic 
power  and  in  the  faculty  of  sustained  and  orderly  effort,  is 
enough  to  account  for  the  fact.  We  cannot  draw  inferences 
for  religion  from  the  absence  of  an  elaborate  mythology ; 
the  question  is  whether  there  are  not  traces,  in  however 
crude  a  form,  of  tlie  mythological  point  of  view.  And 
this  question  must  be  answered  in  the  affirmative.  I  must 
not  turn  aside  now  to  speak  at  large  of  Semitic  myths,  but 
it  is  to  the  point  to  observe  that  there  do  exist  remains  of 
myths,  and  not  only  of  myths  but  of  sacred  usages,  involv- 
ing a  conception  of  the  divine  beings  and  their  relation 
with  man  which  entirely  justifies  us  in  taking  the  kinship 
of  men  with  gods  in  its  literal  and  physical  sense,  exactly 
as  in  Greece.  In  Greece  the  loves  of  the  gods  with  the 
daughters  of  men  were  referred  to  remote  antiquity,  but  in 
Babylon  the  god  Bel  was  still,  in  the  time  of  Herodotus, 
provided  with  a  human  wife,  who  spent  the  night  in  his 
temple  and  with  whom  he  was  believed  to  share  his  couch.^ 
In  one  of  the  few  fragments  of  old  mythology  which  have 
been  transplanted  unaltered  into  the  Hebrew  Scriptures,  we 
read  of  the  sons  of  gods  who  took  wives  of  the  daughters 
of  men,  and  became  the  fathers  of  the  renowned  heroes  of 
ancient  days.  Such  a  hero  is  the  Izdubar  of  Babylonian 
myth,  to  whom  the  great  goddess  Ishtar  did  not  disdain  to 
offer  her  hand.  Arabian  tradition  presents  similar  legends. 
The  clan  of  'Amr  b.  Yarbu'  was  descended  from  a  siCdt,  or 
she-demou,  who  became  the  wife  of  their  human  father, 
but  suddenly  disappeared  from  him  on  seeing  a  flash  of 
liffhtninff.^  In  this  connection  the  distinction  between 
gods  and  demi-gods  is  immaterial ;  the  demi-gods  are  of 

1  Tliis  is  not  more  realistic  tlian  the  custom  of  providing  the  Hercules 
(Baal)  of  Sanbulos  with  a  horse,  on  which  he  rode  out  to  hunt  by  night  (Tac. 
Avn.  xii.  13  ;  of.  Gaz.  Archdol.  1879,  pp.  178  f<qq.).  See  also  supra,  p.  45, 
note  2. 

2  Ibn  Doreid,  Kitdh  al-inhticdc,  p.  139. 


LECT.    !i.  GODS    AND    MEN.  51 

divine  kind,  though  they  have  not  attained  to  the  full 
position  of  deities  with  a  recognised  circle  of  worshippers. 
It  is  plain,  therefore,  that  there  is  nothing  in  the  Semitic 
conception  of  the  divine  nature  which  forbids  us  to  take  in 
its  literal  sense  the  kinship  between  men  and  their  tribal 
god ;  on  the  contrary,  any  other  interpretation  involves  a 
manifest  distortion  of  the  facts. 

There  is  then  a  great  variety  of  evidence  to  show  that 
the  type  of  religion  which  is  founded  on  kinship,  and  in 
which  the  deity  and  his  worshippers  make  up  a  society 
united  by  the  bond  of  blood,  was  widely  prevalent,  and 
tliat  at  an  early  date,  among  all  the  Semitic  peoples.  But 
tlie  force  of  the  evidence  goes  further,  and  leaves  no 
reasonable  doubt  that  among  the  Semites  this  was  the 
original  type  of  religion,  out  of  which  all  other  types 
grew.  That  it  was  so  is  particularly  clear  as  regards 
Arabia,  where  we  have  found  that  the  conception  of  tlie 
circle  of  worship  and  the  circle  of  kindred  as  identical  was 
so  deeply  rooted  that  it  dominated  the  practical  side  of 
religion,  even  after  men  worshipped  deities  that  were  not 
kindred  gods.  But,  among  the  other  branches  of  the 
Semites  also,  the  connection  between  religion  and  kinsliij) 
is  often  manifested  in  forms  that  cannot  be  explained 
except  by  reference  to  a  primitive  stage  of  society,  in 
which  the  circle  of  blood  relations  was  also  the  circle 
of  all  religious  and  social  unity.  Nations,  as  dis- 
tinguished from  mere  clans,  are  not  constructed  on  the 
principle  of  kinship,  and  yet  the  Semitic  nations 
habitually  feigned  tliemselves  to  be  of  one  kin,  and 
their  national  religions  are  deeply  imbued,  botli  in 
legend  and  in  ritual,  with  the  idea  that  the  gotl  and 
his  worshippers  are  of  one  stock.  This,  I  appreliend, 
is  good  evidence  that  the  fundamental  lines  of  all 
Semitic   religion  were   laid   down,  long   before  the  begin- 


52  THE   RELIGION 


I.KCT.    IT. 


nings  of  authentic  history,  in  that  earliest  stage  of 
society  when  kinship  was  the  only  recognised  type  of 
permanent  friendly  relation  between  man  and  man,  and 
therefore  the  only  type  on  which  it  was  possible  to 
frame  the  conception  of  a  permanent  friendly  relation 
between  a  group  of  men  and  a  supernatural  being. 
That  all  human  societies  have  been  developed  from 
this  stage  is  now  generally  recognised ;  and  the  evidence 
shows  that  among  the  Semites  the  historical  forms  of 
religion  can  be  traced  back  to  such  a  stage. 

liecent  researches  into  the  history  of  the  family  render 
it  in  the  highest  degree  improbable  that  the  physical 
kinship  between  the  god  and  his  worshippers,  of  which 
traces  are  found  all  over  the  Semitic  area,  was  originally 
conceived  as  fatherhood.  It  was  the  mother's,  not  the 
father's,  blood  which  formed  the  original  bond  of  kinship 
among  the  Semites  as  among  other  early  peoples,  and  in 
this  stage  of  society,  if  the  tribal  deity  was  thought  of 
as  the  parent  of  the  stock,  a  goddess,  not  a  god,  would 
necessarily  have  been  the  object  of  worship.  In  point 
of  fact,  goddesses  play  a  great  part  in  Semitic  religion, 
and  that  not  merely  in  the  subordinate  role  of  wives  of 
the  gods ;  it  is  also  noticeable  that  in  various  parts  of 
the  Semitic  field  we  find  deities  originally  female  changing 
their  sex  and  becoming  gods,  as  if  with  the  change  in  the 
rule  of  human  kinship.^  So  long  as  kinship  was  traced 
through  the  mother  alone,  a  male  deity  of  common  stock 
with  his  worshippers  could  only  be  their  cousin,  or,  in  the 
language  of  that  stage  of  society,  their  brother.  This  in 
fact  is  the  relationship  between  gods  and  men  asserted  by 
Pindar,  when  he  ascribes  to  both  alike  a  common  mother 
Earth,  and  among  the  Semites  a   trace  of  the  same  point 

^  See  Kinship,  p.  292  sqq.,  note  8.     I  hope  to  return  to  this  subject  on  a 
future  opportunity. 


LF.CT.    II. 


OF    KINSHIP.  53 


of  view  may  be  seen  in  the  class  of  proper  names  which 
designate  their  bearers  as  "  brother  "  or  "  sister  "  of  a  deity/ 
If  this  be  so,  we  must  distingnisli  tlie  religious  significance 
belonging  to  the  wider  and  older  conception  of  kinsliip 
between  the  deity  and  the  race  that  worsliipped  him,  from 
the  special  and  more  advanced  ideas,  conformed  to  a  higher 
stage  of  social  development,  tliat  were  added  when  the 
kindred  god  came  to  be  revered  as  a  father. 

Some  of  the  most  notable  and  constant  features  of 
all  ancient  heathenism,  and  indeed  of  all  nature-religions, 
from  the  totemism  of  savages  upward,  find  their  sufficient 
explanation  in  the  physical  kinship  that  unites  the  human 
and  superhuman  members  of  the  same  religious  and  social 
community,  without  reference  to  the  special  doctrine  of 
divine  fatherhood.  From  this  point  of  view  the  natural 
solidarity  of  the  god  and  his  worshippers,  which  has  been 
already  enlarged  upon  as  characteristic  of  antique  religion, 
at  once  becomes  intelligible ;  the  indissoluble  bond  that 
unites  men  to  their  god  is  the  same  bond  of  blood-fellow- 
ship which  in  early  society  is  the  one  binding  link 
between  man  and  man,  and  the  one  sacred  principle  of 
moral  obligation.  And  thus  we  see  that  even  in  its 
rudest  forms  religion  was  a  moral  force ;  the  powers 
that  man  reveres  were  on  the  side  of  social  order  and 
triljal  law ;  and  tlie  fear  of  the  gods  was  a  motive  to 
enforce  the  laws  of  society,  which  were  also  the  laws  of 
morality. 

But  though  the  earliest  nature  -  religion  was  fully 
identified  with  the  earliest  morality,  it  was  not  fitted 
to  raise  morality  towards  higher  ideals ;  and  instead  of 
leading  the  way  in  social  and  ethical  progress,  it  was  often 
content  to  follow  or  even  to  lag  behind.  Eeligious  feeling 
is    naturally  conservative,  for   it   is    bound    up  with    old 

'  See  above,  p.  4.i,  note  2. 


54  THE   RELIGION  lect.  it. 

custom  and  usage ;  and  the  gods,  who  are  approached 
only  in  traditional  ritual,  and  invoked  as  giving  sanction 
to  long-established  principles  of  conduct,  seem  always  to 
be  on  the  side  of  those  who  are  averse  to  change.  Among 
the  Semites,  as  among  other  races,  religion  often  came  to 
work  against  a  higher  morality,  not  because  it  was  in 
its  essence  a  power  for  evil,  but  because  it  clung  to  the 
obsolete  ethical  standard  of  a  bygone  stage  of  society. 
To  our  better  judgment,  for  example,  one  of  the  most 
offensive  features  in  tribal  religion  is  its  particularism ; 
a  man  is  held  answerable  to  his  god  for  wrong  done  to 
a  member  of  his  own  kindred  or  political  community,  but 
he  may  deceive,  rob,  or  kill  an  alien  without  offence  to 
religion ;  the  deity  cares  only  for  his  own  kinsfolk.  This 
is  a  very  narrow  morality,  and  we  are  tempted  to  call  it 
sheer  immorality.  But  such  a  judgment  would  be  alto- 
gether false  from  an  historical  point  of  view.  The  larger 
morality  which  embraces  all  mankind  has  its  basis  in 
habits  of  loyalty,  love,  and  self-sacrifice,  which  were 
originally  formed  and  grew  strong  in  the  narrower  circle 
of  the  family  or  the  clan  ;  and  the  part  which  the  religion 
of  kinship  played  in  the  development  and  maintenance 
of  these  habits,  is  one  of  the  greatest  services  it  has 
done  to  human  progress.  This  service  it  was  able  to 
render  because  the  gods  were  themselves  members  of 
the  kin,  and  the  man  who  was  untrue  to  kindred  duty 
had  to  reckon  witli  them  as  well  as  with  his  human 
clansmen. 

An  eloquent  French  writer  has  recently  quoted  with 
approval,  and  applied  to  the  beginnings  of  Semitic  religion, 
the  words  of  Statins,  Primus  in  orbe  deos  fecit  timor^ 
"  Man  fancied  himself  surrounded  by  enemies  whom  he 
sought  to  appease."  But  however  true  it  is  that  savage 
^  Renan,  Hint,  d' Israel,  i.  29. 


T.r.cT.  II.  OF    KINSHIP.  55 

man  feels  himself  to  be  environed  by  innumerable  dangers 
which  he  does  not  understand,  and  so  personifies  as  invisible 
or  mysterious  enemies  of  more  than  human  power,  it  is  not 
true  that  the  attempt  to  appease  these  powers  is  the  founda- 
tion of  religion.  From  the  earliest  times  religion,  as  distinct 
from  magic  or  sorcery,  addresses  itself  to  kindred  and 
friendly  beings,  who  may  indeed  be  angry  with  their  people 
for  a  time,  but  are  always  placable  except  to  the  enemies 
of  their  worshippers  or  to  renegade  members  of  the  com- 
munity. It  is  not  with  a  vague  fear  of  unknown  powers, 
but  with  a  loving  reverence  for  known  gods  who  are  knit 
to  their  worshippers  by  strong  bonds  of  kinship,  that 
religion  in  the  only  true  sense  of  the  word  begins. 
Eeligion  in  this  sense  is  not  the  child  of  terror,  and 
the  difference  between  it  and  the  savage's  dread  of  un- 
seen foes  is  as  absolute  and  fundamental  in  the  earliest 
as  in  the  latest  stages  of  development.  It  is  only  in 
times  of  social  dissolution,  as  in  the  last  age  of  tlie 
small  Semitic  states,  when  men  and  their  gods  were 
alike  powerless  before  the  advance  of  the  Assyrians,  that 
magical  superstitions  based  on  mere  terror,  or  rites 
designed  to  conciliate  alien  gods,  invade  the  sphere  of 
tribal  or  national  religion.  In  better  times  the  religion 
of  the  tribe  or  state  has  nothing  in  common  with  the 
private  and  foreign  superstitions  or  magical  rites  that 
savage  terror  may  dictate  to  the  individual.  Eeligion 
is  not  an  arbitrary  relation  of  the  individual  man  to  a 
supernatural  power,  it  is  a  relation  of  all  the  members 
of  a  community  to  a  power  that  has  the  good  of  the 
community  at  heart,  and  protects  its  law  and  moral 
order.  This  distinction  seems  to  have  escaped  some 
modern  theorists,  but  it  was  plain  enough  to  the  common 
sense  of  antiquity,  in  which  private  and  magical  supersti- 
tions were  habitually  regarded  as  offences  against  morals 


'^>6  FEMALE    DEITIES  I.ECT.  II. 


and  the  state.  It  is  not  only  in  Israel  that  we  find  the 
suppression  of  magical  rites  to  be  one  of  the  first  cares  of 
the  founder  of  the  kingdom,  or  see  the  introduction  of 
foreign  worships  treated  as  a  heinous  crime.  In  both 
respects  the  law  of  Israel  is  the  law  of  every  well-ordered 
ancient  community. 

In  the  historical  stage  of  Semitic  religion  the  kinship 
of  the  deity  with  his  or  her  people  is  specified  as  father- 
hood or  motherhood,  the  former  conception  predominating, 
in  accordance  with  the  later  rule  that  assimed  the  son  to 
his  father's  stock.  Under  tlie  law  of  male  kinship  woman 
takes  a  subordinate  place ;  the  father  is  the  natural  head 
of  the  family,  and  superior  to  the  mother,  and  accordingly 
the  chief  place  in  religion  usually  belongs,  not  to  a  mother- 
goddess,  but  to  a  father-god.  At  the  same  time  the  concep- 
tion of  the  goddess-mother  was  not  unknown,  and  seems 
to  be  attached  to  cults  which  go  back  to  the  acjes  of 
polyandry  and  female  kinship.  The  Babylonian  Ishtar  in 
lier  oldest  form  is  such  a  mother-goddess,  unmarried,  or 
rather  choosing  her  temporary  partners  at  will,  the  queen 
head  and  first-born  of  all  gods.^  She  is  the  mother  of  the 
gods  and  also  the  mother  of  men,  who,  in  the  Chaldasan 
flood -legends,  mourns  over  the  death  of  her  offspring. 
In  like  manner  the  Carthaginians  worshipped  a  "great 
mother,"  who  seems  to  be  identical  with  Tanith-Artemis, 
the     "  heavenly     virgin,"  ^     and     the     Arabian     Lat    was 

^  Tide,  BabijIonisch-Assi/rische  Gesch.  p.  528. 

^nn-l  DN,  C.  I.  S.  Nos.  195,  380  ;  cf.  No.  177.  The  iileiitification  of 
Taiiitli  with  Artemis  appears  from  No.  116,  where  rum^y  = 'A;>t£^;S&;^«;,  and 
is  confirmed  by  the  prominence  of  the  tnrgo  cmlestis  or  numen  virginale  in 
the  hiter  cults  of  Punic,  Africa.  The  identification  of  the  mother  of  tlie  gods 
with  tlie  heavenly  virgin,  i.f..  tlie  unmarried  go(Mess,  is  confirmed  if  not 
absolutely  demanded  by  Aug.  Civ.  Dei,  ii.  4.  At  Carthage  she  seems  also 
to  be  identical  with  Dido,  of  whom  as  a  goddess  more  in  another  connection. 
See  Hoffmann,  Ueh.  einii/e  Ph(rn.  Innchrr.  p.  32  sq.  The  foul  type  of  worship 
corresponding  to  the  conception  of  the  goddess  as  jiolyandrous  prevailed  at 
Sicca  Veneria,   and  Angustin   siieaks  with   indignation   of  the   incredible 


LF.OT.    II. 


AS    MOTHERS.  57 


worshipped  by  the  Nabatieans  as  motlier  of  tlie  gods,  and 
must  be  identified  with  the  virgin-mother,  whose  worsliip 
at  Petra  is  described  ))y  Epiphaniiis.^ 

Originally,  since  men  are  of  one  stock  with  their  gods, 
the  mother  of  the  gods  must  also  have  been,  like  Ishtar, 
the  mother  of  men ;  but  except  in  Babylonia  and  Assyria, 
where  the  kings  at  least  continued  to  speak  of  themselves 
as  the  progeny  of  Ishtar,  it  is  not  clear  that  tliis  idea  was 
present  to  the  Semitic  worshipper  when  he  addressed  his 

obscenity  of  the  songs  that  accompanied  tlie  worship  of  the  CarthaginiiUi 
mother-goddess  ;  but  perhaps  this  is  not  wholly  to  be  set  down  as  of  Piniic 
origin,  for  the  general  laxity  on  the  point  of  female  chastity  in  which  such  a 
type  of  worship  originates  has  alwaj's  been  characteristic  of  North  Africa  (see 
Tissot,  La  Prow  d'Aj'rique,  i.  477). 

1  Ue  Vogiie,  Syr.  Caitr.  Inscr.  Nab.  No.  8  ;  Epiph.,  Panarium  51  (ii.  483 
Dind.),  see  Kimhip,  p.  292  .s^.  I  am  not  able  to  follow  the  argument  liy  which 
■\Vellh.,  pp.  40,  46,  seeks  to  invalidate  the  evidence  as  to  the  worship  of  a 
mother-goddess  by  the  Nabat;i3ans.  He  supposes  that  the  Xaafiov,  which 
Epiphanius  represents  as  the  virgin-mother  of  Dusares,  is  really  nothing 
more  than  the  cippus,  or  betyl,  out  of  which  tlie  god  was  sujiposed  to  have 
been  boni,  i.f.  the  image  of  the  god  himself,  not  a  distinct  deity.  But  from 
tbe  time  of  Herodotus  downwards,  al-Lat  was  worshipped  in  these  regions 
side  by  side  with  a  god,  and  the  evidence  of  De  Vogiie's  inscription  and 
tliat  of  Epiphanius  agree  in  making  Lat  the  mother  and  the  god  her 
son.  Epiphanius  implies  that  the  virgin-mother  was  worshipped  also  at 
Elusa,  and  here  Jerome,  in  his  life  of  S.  Hilarion,  knows  a  temple  of  a 
goddess  whom  he  calls  Venus,  and  who  was  worshipped  "ob  Luciferum," 
on  account  of  her  connection  with  the  morning  star.  Wellhausen  takes 
this  to  mean  that  the  goddess  of  Elusa  was  identified  with  the  morning  star  ; 
but  this  is  impossible,  for,  in  his  conim.  on  Amos  v.,  Jerome  plainly  indi- 
cates that  the  morning  star  was  worshipped  as  a  god,  not  as  a  goddess. 
This  is  tlie  old  Semitic  conception  ;  see  Isa.  xiv.  12,  "Lucifer,  son  of  the 
Dawn;"  ami  in  the  Arabian  iioets,  also,  the  planet  Venus  is  masculine,  as 
Wellhausen  himself  observes.  I  see  no  reason  to  believe  that  the  Arabs  of 
Nilus  worshipped  the  moriiing  star  as  a  goddess  ;  nor  ])erhaps  does  the 
worship  of  this  planet  as  a  goddess  (Al-'Ozza)  appear  anywhere  in  Arabia, 
except  among  the  Eastern  tribes  who  came  under  the  iiilhicnce  of  the 
Assyrian  Ishtar-worship,  as  it  survived  among  the  Aramreans.  This  point 
Avas  not  clear  to  me  when  I  wrote  my  K'nifliip,  and  want  of  attention  to 
it  has  brought  .some  confusion  into  the  argument.  That  the  goddess  ot 
Elusa  was  Al-'Ozza,  as  Wellh.,  p.  44,  supposes,  is  thus  very  doubtful. 
"Whether,  as  Tuch  thought,  her  local  name  was  Khalasa  is  also  doubtful,  but 
we  must  not  reject  the  identification  of  Elusa  with  the  place  still  called 
KhaJasa  ;  see  Talmer,  Desert  of  the  Exodus,  p.  423,  compared  with  p.  550  #77. 


58  FEMALE   DEITIES  lkct.  ii. 

goddess  as  the  great  mother.  But  if  we  may  judge  from 
analogy,  and  even  from  such  modern  analogies  as  are 
supplied  by  the  cult  of  the  Virgin  Mary,  we  can  hardly 
doubt  that  the  use  of  a  name  appropriated  to  the  tenderest 
and  truest  of  human  relationships  was  associated  in  acts 
of  worship  with  feelings  of  peculiar  warmth  and  trustful 
devotion.  "  Can  a  woman  forget  her  sucking  child,  that 
she  should  not  have  compassion  on  the  son  of  her  womb  ? 
Yea,  they  may  forget,  yet  will  I  not  forgot  thee."  ^ 
That  such  thoughts  were  not  wholly  foreign  to  Semitic 
heathenism  appears,  to  give  a  single  instance,  from  the 
language  in  which  Assurbanipal  appeals  to  Ishtar  in  his 
time  of  need,  and  in  the  oracle  she  sends  to  comfort  him.'"^ 

But  in  this,  as  in  all  its  aspects,  heathenism  shows  its 
fundamental  weakness,  in  its  inability  to  separate  the 
ethical  motives  of  religion  from  their  source  in  a  merely 
naturalistic  conception  of  the  godhead  and  its  relation  to 
man.  Divine  motherhood,  like  the  kinship  of  men  and 
gods  in  general,  was  to  the  heathen  Semites  a  physical 
fact,  and  the  development  of  the  corresponding  cults  and 
myths  laid  more  stress  on  the  physical  than  on  the  ethical 
side  of  maternity,  and  gave  a  prominence  to  sexual  ideas 
which  was  never  edifying,  and  often  repulsive.  Especially 
was  this  the  case  when  the  change  in  the  law  of  kinship 
deprived  the  mother  of  her  old  pre-eminence  in  the  family, 
and  transferred  to  the  father  the  greater  part  of  her 
authority  and  dignity.  This  change,  as  we  know,  went 
hand  in  hand  with  the  abolition  of  the  old  polyandry ;  and 
as  women  lost  the  right  to  choose  their  own  partners  at 
will,  the  wife  became  subject  to  her  husband's  lordship, 
and  her  freedom  of  action  was  restrained  by  his  jealousy, 
at  the  same  time  tliat  her  children  became,  for  all  purposes 

1  Isaiah  xlix.  1 5. 

2  George  Smith,  Assurbanipal,  p.  117  sqq.;  Records  of  the  Past,  ix.  51  sqq. 


LECT.    II. 


AS   MOTHERS.  59 


of  inheritance  and  all  duties  of  blood,  members  of  his  an<l 
not  of  her  kin.  So  fur  as  religion  kept  pace  with  the 
new  laws  of  social  morality  due  to  this  development, 
the  independent  divine  mother  necessarily  became  the 
subordinate  partner  of  a  male  deity ;  and  so  tlie  old 
polyandrous  Ishtar  reappears  in  Canaan  and  elsewhere 
as  Astarte,  the  wife  of  the  supreme  Baal  Or  if  the 
supremacy  of  the  goddess  was  too  well  established  to  be 
thus  undermined,  she  might  change  her  sex,  as  in  Southern 
Arabia,  where  Ishtar  is  transformed  into  the  masculine 
'Athtar.  But  not  seldom  religious  tradition  refused  to 
move  forward  with  the  progress  of  society ;  the  goddess 
retained  her  old  character  as  a  mother  who  was  not  a 
wife  bound  to  fidelity  to  her  husband,  and  at  her  sanctuary 
she  protected,  under  the  name  of  religion,  the  sexual 
licence  of  savage  society,  or  even  demanded  of  the 
daughters  of  lier  worshippers  a  shameful  sacrifice  of  their 
chastity,  before  they  were  permitted  to  bind  themselves 
for  the  rest  of  their  lives  to  that  conjugal  fidelity  which 
their  goddess  despised. 

The  emotional  side  of  Semitic  heathenism  was  always 
very  much  connected  with  the  worship  of  female  deities, 
partly  through  the  associations  of  maternity,  which 
appealed  to  the  purest  and  tenderest  feelings,  and 
partly  through  other  associations  connected  with  woman, 
which  too  often  appealed  to  the  sensuality  so  strongly 
developed  in  the  Semitic  race.  The  associations  called 
forth  when  the  deity  was  conceived  as  a  father  were  on 
the  whole  of  an  austerer  kind,  for  the  distinctive  note  of 
fatherhood,  as  distinguished  from  kinship  in  general,  lay 
mainly  in  the  parental  authority,  in  the  father's  claim  to 
be  honoured  and  served  by  his  son.  The  honour  which 
the  fifth  commandment  requires  children  to  pay  to  their 
fathers  is  named  in  Mai.  i.    6    along   with  that  which  a 


60  THE    GOD    AS    FATHER  1-F.ct.  n. 


servant  owes  to  his  master,  and  the  same  prophet  (iii.  17) 
speaks  of  the  considerate  regard  which  a  father  shows 
for  "  the  son  that  serveth  him."  To  this  day  the  grown-up 
son  in  Arabia  serves  his  father  in  much  the  same  offices 
as  the  domestic  slave,  and  approaches  him  with  much  the 
same  degree  of  reverence  and  even  of  constraint.  It  is 
only  with  his  little  children  that  the  father  is  effusively 
affectionate  and  on  quite  easy  terms.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  father's  authority  had  not  a  despotic  character.  He 
had  no  such  power  of  life  and  death  over  his  sons  as 
Ptoman  law  recognised,^  and  indeed,  after  they  passed 
beyond  childhood,  had  no  means  of  enforcing  his  authority 
if  they  refused  to  respect  it.  Paradoxical  as  this  may 
seem,  it  is  quite  in  harmony  with  the  general  spirit  of 
Semitic  institutions  that  authority  should  exist  and  be 
generally  acknowledged  without  having  any  force  behind 
it  except  the  pressure  of  public  opinion.  The  authority 
of  an  Arab  sheikh  is  in  the  same  position ;  and  when  an 
Arab  judge  pronounces  sentence  on  a  culprit,  it  is  at  the 
option  of  the  latter  whether  he  will  pay  the  fine,  which  is 
the  invariable  form  of  penalty,  or  continue  in  feud  with 
his  accuser. 

Thus  while  the  conception  of  the  tribal  god  as  father 
introduces  into  religion  the  idea  of  divine  authority,  of 
reverence  and  service  due  from  the  worshipper  to  the 
deity,  it  does  not  carry  with  it  any  idea  of  the  strict  and 
rigid  enforcement  of  divine  commands  by  supernatural 
sanctions.      The  respect  paid  by  the  Semite  to  his  father 

1  See  Deut.  xxi.  18.  where  the  word  "chastened"  should  rather  be 
"admonished."  The  powerlessness  of  Jacob  to  restrain  his  grown-up  sons  is 
not  related  as  a  proof  that  he  was  weak,  but  shows  tliat  a  father  had  no  means 
of  enforcing  his  authority.  The  law  of  Deuteronomy  can  hardly  have  been 
carried  into  practice.  In  Prov.  xxx.  17  disobedience  to  parents  is  cited  as 
a  thing  which  brings  a  man  to  a  l)ad  end,  not  as  a  thing  punished  by  law. 
That  an  Arab  father  could  do  no  more  than  argue  with  his  son,  and  bring 
tribal  opinion  to  bear  on  him,  appears  from  A'jh.  xix.  102  >tq. 


LECT.  u.  OF   HIS    WORSnirPKRS.  61 


is  but  the  respect  which  he  pays  to  kindred,  focussed 
upon  a  single  representative  person,  and  the  father's 
authority  is  only  a  special  manifestation  of  the  authority 
of  the  kin,  which  can  go  no  further  than  the  whole  kin  is 
prepared  to  back  it.  Thus  in  the  sphere  of  religion  the 
god,  as  father,  stands  by  the  majority  of  the  tribe  in 
enforcing  tribal  law  against  refractory  members  ;  outlawry, 
which  is  the  only  punishment  ordinarily  applicable  to 
a  clansman,  carries  with  it  excommunication  from  religious 
communion,  and  the  man  who  defies  tribal  law  has  to  fear 
the  god  as  well  as  his  fellow-men.  ]jut  in  all  minor 
matters,  where  outlawry  is  out  of  the  question,  the  long- 
suffering  tolerance  which  tribesmen  in  early  society 
habitually  extend  to  the  offences  of  their  fellow-tribesmen 
is  ascribed  also  to  the  god ;  he  does  not  willingly  break 
with  any  of  his  worshijipers,  and  accordingly  a  bold  and 
wilful  man  does  not  hesitate  to  take  considerable  liberties 
with  the  paternal  deity.  As  regards  his  worshippers  at 
large  it  appears  scarcely  conceivable,  from  the  point  of 
view  of  tribal  religion,  that  the  god  can  be  so  much 
displeased  with  anything  they  do  that  his  anger  can  go 
beyond  a  temporary  estrangement,  which  is  readily 
terminated  by  their  repentance,  or  even  by  a  mere  change 
of  humour  on  the  part  of  the  god,  when  his  permanent 
affection  for  his  own  gets  the  better  of  his  momentary 
displeasure,  as  it  is  pretty  sure  to  do  if  he  sees  them  to 
be  in  straits,  e.g.  to  be  hard  pressed  by  their  and  his 
enemies.  On  the  whole,  men  live  on  very  easy  terms 
with  their  tribal  god,  and  his  paternal  authority  is  neither 
strict  nor  exacting. 

This  is  a  very  characteristic  feature  of  heathen  religion, 
and  one  which  does  not  disappear  when  the  god  of  the 
community  comes  to  be  thought  of  as  king  rather  than  as 
father.     The  inscription  of  King  ]\Ieslia,  for  example,  tells 


62  THE    GOD    AS    KIXG  lkct.  it. 

US  that  Chemosh  was  angry  with  his  people,  and  suffered 
Israel  to  oppress  ]\Ioab ;  and  then  again  that  Chemosh 
fought  for  Moab,  and  delivered  it  from  the  foe.  There  is 
no  explanation  offered  of  the  god's  change  of  mind  ;  it 
appears  to  be  simply  taken  for  granted  that  he  was  tired 
of  seeing  his  people  put  to  the  worse.  In  like  manner 
the  mass  of  the  Hebrews  before  the  exile  received  witli 
blank  incredulity  the  prophetic  teaching,  that  Jehovah  was 
ready  to  enforce  His  law  of  righteousness  even  by  the 
destruction  of  the  sinful  commonwealth  of  Israel.  To  the 
prophets  Jehovah's  long-suffering  meant  the  patience  with 
which  He  offers  repeated  calls  to  repentance,  and  defers 
punishment  while  there  is  hope  of  amendment  ;  but  to 
the  heathen,  and  to  the  heathenly-minded  in  Israel,  the 
long-suffering  of  the  gods  meant  a  disposition  to  overlook 
the  offences  of  their  worshippers. 

To  reconcile  the  forgiving  goodness  of  God  with  His 
absolute  justice,  is  one  of  the  highest  problems  of  spiritual 
religion,  which  in  Christianity  is  solved  by  the  doctrine  of 
the  atonement.  It  is  important  to  realise  that  in  heathen- 
ism this  problem  never  arose  in  the  form  in  which  the 
New  Testament  deals  with  it,  not  because  the  gods  of  the 
heathen  were  not  conceived  as  good  and  gracious,  but 
because  they  were  not  absolutely  just.  This  lack  of  strict 
justice,  however,  is  not  to  be  taken  as  meaning  that  the 
gods  were  in  their  nature  unjust,  when  measured  by  the 
existing  standards  of  social  righteousness  ;  as  a  rule  they 
were  conceived  as  sympathising  with  right  conduct,  but 
not  as  rigidly  enforcing  it  in  every  case.  To  us,  who  are 
accustomed  to  take  an  abstract  view  of  the  divine  attri- 
butes, this  is  difficult  to  conceive,  but  it  seemed  perfectly 
natural  when  the  divine  sovereignty  was  conceived  as  a 
kingship  precisely  similar  to  human  kingship. 

In  its  beginnings,  human  kingship  was  as  little  absolute 


LECT.  ir.  OF  HIS    PEOrLK.  63 


as  the  authority  of  the    fathers    and    elders  of  the  clan, 
for  it  was    not    sup}>orted    by  an   executive    organisation 
sufficient   to  carry  out   the  king's    sentence  of  justice  or 
constrain  obedience  to  his  decrees.     The  authority  of  the 
prince  was  moral  rather  than  physical ;  his  business  was 
to  guide  rather  than  to  dictate  the  conduct   of   his   free 
subjects,  to  declare  what  was  just  rather  than  to  enforce 
it.     Thus  the   limitations   of    royal   power  went  on  quite 
an  opposite  principle  from  that  which  underlies  a  modern 
limited  monarchy.     With  us  the  king  or  his  government 
is  armed  with  the  fullest  authority    to   enforce   law   and 
justice,    and    the    limitations    of    his    power    lie    in    the 
independence  of   the   legislature   and   the  judicial   courts. 
The  old  Semitic  king,  on  the  contrary,  was  supreme  judge, 
and  his  decrees  were  laws,  but  neither  his  sentences  nor 
his  decrees  could  take  effect  unless  they  were  supported 
by  forces  over  wliich  he  had  very  imperfect  control.     He 
simply  threw   his  weight   into  the  scale,   a  weight  which 
was  partly  due  to  the  moral   effect  of  his  sentence,  and 
partly  to  the  material  resources  which  he  commanded,  not 
so  much  as  king  as  in  the  character  of  a  great  noble  and 
the  head  of  a  powerful  circle  of  kinsfolk  and  clients.     An 
energetic  sovereign,  who  had  gained  wealth  and  prestige 
by  successful    wars,   or    inherited   the   resources  accumu- 
lated by  a  line  of  kingly    ancestors,  might   wield  almost 
despotic  power,  and  in  a  stable  dynasty  the  tendency  was 
towards  the  gradual   establishment  of  a1)Solute  monarchy, 
especially    if    the    royal    house    was    able   to   maintain   a 
standing    army    devoted    to    its    interests.       But    a    pure 
despotism  of  the  modern  Eastern  type   prol)ably  liad  not 
been  reached   by   any   of   the   small   kingdoms  that  were 
crushed   by  the  Assyrian  empire,  and  certainly  the  ideas 
which  underlay  the  conception  of  divine  sovereignty  date 
from   an  age  when   the    human   kingship  was   still    in   a 


04  THE    GOD    AS   KING  lect.  ir. 

rudimentary  state,  when  its  executive  strength  was  very 
limited,  and  the  sovereign  was  in  no  way  held  responsible 
for  the  constant  maintenance  of  law  and  order  in  all  parts  of 
his  realm.  In  most  matters  of  internal  order  he  was  not 
expected  to  interfere  unless  directly  appealed  to  by  one 
or  other  party  in  a  dispute,  and  even  then  it  was  not 
certain  that  the  party  in  whose  favour  he  decided  would 
not  be  left  to  make  good  his  rights  with  the  aid  of  his  own 
family  connections.  So  loose  a  system  of  administration 
did  not  offer  a  pattern  on  which  to  frame  the  conception 
of  a  constant  unremitting  divine  providence,  overlooking 
no  injustice  and  suffering  no  right  to  be  crushed  ;  the 
national  god  might  be  good  and  just,  but  was  not  con- 
tinually active  or  omnipresent  in  his  activity.  But  we 
are  not  to  suppose  that  this  remissness  was  felt  to  be  a 
defect  in  the  divine  character.  The  Semitic  nature  is 
impatient  of  control,  and  has  no  desire  to  be  strictly 
<roverned  either  by  human  or  by  divine  authority.  A  god 
who  could  be  reached  when  he  was  wanted,  but  usually 
left  men  pretty  much  to  themselves,  was  far  more  accept- 
able than  one  whose  ever  watchful  eye  can  neither  be 
avoided  nor  deceived.  What  the  Semitic  communities 
asked,  and  believed  themselves  to  receive,  from  their  divine 
kino-  lay  mainly  in  three  things  :  help  against  their  enemies, 
counsel  by  oracles  or  soothsayers  in  matters  of  national 
ditficulty,  and  a  sentence  of  justice  when  a  case  was  too 
hard  for  human  decision.  The  valour  ^  the  wisdom  and 
the  justice  of  the  nation  looked  to  him  as  their  head,  and 
were  strengthened  by  his  support  in  time  of  need.  For 
the  rest  it  was  not  expected  that  he  should  always  be  busy 
riohting  human  affairs.  In  ordinary  matters  it  was  men's 
business  to  help  themselves  and  their  own  kinsfolk,  though 
the  sense  that  the  god  was  always  near,  and  could  be 
called  upon  at  need,  was  a  moral  force  continually  working 


LECT.   II. 


OF   HIS   PEOPLE.  65 


in  some  degree  for  the  maintenance  of  social  righteousness 
and  order.  The  strength  of  this  moral  force  was  indeed 
very  uncertain,  for  it  was  always  possible  for  the  evil- 
doer to  flatter  himself  that  his  offence  would  be  overlooked  ; 
but  even  so  uncertain  an  influence  of  religion  over  conduct 
was  of  no  little  use  in  the  slow  and  difficult  process  of  the 
consolidation  of  an  orderly  society  out  of  barbarism. 

As  a  social  and  political  force,  in  the  earlier  stages  of 
Semitic  society,  antique  religion  cannot  be  said  to  have 
failed  in  its  mission  ;  but  it  was  too  closely  modelled 
on  the  traditional  organisation  of  the  family  and  the 
nation  to  retain  a  healthful  vitality  when  the  social 
system  was  violently  shattered.  Among  the  northern 
Semites  the  age  of  Assyrian  conquest  proved  as  critical  for 
religious  as  for  civil  history,  for  from  that  time  forward 
the  old  religion  was  quite  out  of  touch  with  the  actualities 
of  social  life,  and  became  almost  wholly  mischievous.  But 
apart  from  the  Assyrian  catastrophe,  there  are  good  reasons 
to  think  that  in  the  eighth  century  B.C.  the  national 
religion  of  the  northern  Semites  had  already  passed  its 
prime,  and  was  sinking  into  decadence.  The  moral  springs 
of  conduct  which  it  touched  were  mainly  connected  with 
the  first  needs  of  a  rude  society,  with  the  community's 
instinct  of  self-preservation.  The  enthusiasm  of  religion 
was  seen  only  in  times  of  peril,  when  the  nation,  under 
its  divine  head,  was  struggling  for  national  existence.  In 
times  of  peace  and  prosperity,  religion  had  little  force  to 
raise  man  above  sensuality  and  kindle  him  to  right  and 
noble  deeds.  Except  when  the  nation  was  in  danger  it 
called  for  no  self-denial,  and  rather  encouraged  an  easy 
sluggish  indulgence  in  the  good  tilings  that  were  enjoyed 
under  the  protection  of  the  national  god.  The  evils  that 
slowly  sap  society,  the  vices  that  at  first  sight  seem  too 

private  to  be  matters  of   national  concern,  the   disorders 

s 


66  THE    GOD  LECT.  IT. 


that  accompany  the  increase  and  unequal  distribution  of 
wealth,  the  relaxation  of  moral  fibre  produced  by  luxury 
and  sensuality,  were  things  that  religion  hardly  touched  at 
all,  and  that  the  easy,  indulgent  god  could  hardly  be 
thought  to  take  note  of.  The  God  who  could  deal  with 
such  evils  was  the  God  of  the  prophets,  no  mere  Oriental 
king  raised  to  a  throne  in  heaven,  but  tlie  just  and 
jealous  God,  whose  eyes  are  in  every  place,  beholding  the 
evil  and  the  good,  who  is  of  purer  eyes  than  to  behold 
evil,  and  cannot  look  upon  iniquity.^ 

In  what  precedes  I  have  thought  it  convenient  to  assume 
for  the  moment,  without  breaking  the  argument  by  pausing 
to  offer  proof,  that  among  the  Semitic  peoples  which  got 
beyond  the  mere  tribal  stage  and  developed  a  tolerably 
organised  state,  the  supreme  deity  was  habitually  thought 
of  as  king.  The  definitive  proof  that  this  was  really  so 
must  be  sought  in  the  details  of  religious  practice,  to  which 
we  shall  come  by  and  by,  and  in  which  we  shall  find 
indicated  a  most  realistic  conception  of  the  divine  king- 
ship. Meantime  some  proofs  of  a  different  character  may 
be  briefly  indicated.  In  the  Old  Testament  the  kingship 
of  Jehovah  is  often  set  forth  as  the  glory  of  Israel,  but 
never  in  such  terms  as  to  suggest  that  the  idea  of  divine 
kingship  was  peculiar  to  the  Hebrews.  On  the  contrary, 
other  nations  are  "  the  kingdoms  of  the  false  gods."  ^  In 
two  exceptional  cases  a  pious  judge  or  a  prophet  appears 
to  express  the  opinion  that  Jehovah's  sovereignty  is  incon- 
sistent with  human  kingship,'*  such  as  existed  in  the 
surrounding  nations,  but  this  difficulty  was  never  felt  by 
the  mass  of  the  Israelites,  nor  even  by  the  prophets  in  the 
regal  period,  and  it  was  certainly  not  felt  by  Israel's 
neighbours.     If  a  son  could  be  crowned  in  the  lifetime  of 

1  Prov.  XV.  3  ;  Hab.  i.  13,  «  Jga.  x.  10. 

3  Judges  viii.  23  ;  1  Sam.  xii.  12. 


LECT.  II.  AS    KING.  G7 

his  father,  as  was  done  in  the  case  of  Solomon,  or  could  act 
for  his  father  as  Jotham  acted  for  Uzziah,^  there  was  no 
difficulty  in  looking  on  the  human  king  as  the  viceroy  of 
the  divine  sovereign,  who,  as  we  have  seen,  was  often 
believed  to  be  the  father  of  the  royal  race,  and  so  to  lend 
a  certain  sanctity  to  the  dynasty.  Accordingly  we  find 
that  the  Tyrian  Baal  bears  the  title  of  IMelcartli,  "  king  of 
the  city,"  or  more  fully,  "  our  lord  Melcarth,  the  Baal  of 
Tyre,"  ^  and  this  sovereignty  was  acknowledged  by  the 
Carthaginian  colonists  when  they  paid  tithes  at  his  temple 
in  the  mother  city ;  for  in  the  East  tithes  are  the  king's 
due.^  Similarly  tlie  supreme  god  of  the  Ammonites  was 
Milkom  or  ]\Ialkam,  which  is  only  a  variation  of  Melek, 
"  king."  So  too  Adrammelech  and  Anammelech,  that  is, 
"  King  Adar  "  and  "  King  Ann,"  are  the  gods  of  Sepharvaim 
or  Sippar  in  Babylonia  (2  Kings  xvii.  31);  but  indeed  in 
Babylonia  and  Assyria  the  application  of  royal  tithes  to 
deities  is  too  common  to  call  for  special  exemplification. 
Again,  we  have  Malakhbel,  "  King  Bel,"  as  the  great  god 
of  the  Arama?ans  of  Palmyra,  but  in  this  and  other 
examples  of  later  date  it  is  perhaps  open  to  suppose  that 
the  kingship  of  the  supreme  deity  means  his  sovereignty 
over  other  gods  rather  than  over  his  worshippers.  On 
the  other  hand,  a  large  mass  of  evidence  can  be 
drawn  from  })roper  names  of  religious  significance,  in 
which  the  god  of  the  worshipper  is  designated  as  king. 
Such  names  were  as  common  among  the  riKicnicians 
and    Assyrians   as   they  were   among   the   Israelites,*  and 

1  1  Kings  i.  32  sqq.;  2  Kings  xv.  5.  -  C.  I.  S.  No,  122. 

3  Diod.  XX.  14  ;  and  for  the  payment  of  tithes  to  the  king,  1  Sam.  viii. 
15,  17  ;  Aristotle,  QJcon.  ii.  p.  1352i  of  tlie  IJerlin  ed.,  of  p.  13456. 

*  "I^O^nx,  C.  I.  S.  No.  50,  cf.  ^ya^nS',  No.  54  ;  I^DinN  King  of  Byblus, 
No.  1,  cf.  ^yain',  No.  69 ;  ;n''3^0,  No.  10,  16,  etc.,  cf.  ]r\''bV2,  No.  78,  {n'st^n, 
No.  44  ;  1^1212]},  No.  46,  cf.  "IDKl^y,  ID::'Nn3y,  etc.  ;  I^Oiy,  Nos.  189,  219, 
386,  cf.  hV2]V,  on  a  coin  of  Hybhis,  Head,  p.  668.  Tiie  title  of  n^b^^ 
"tjueen,"  for  Astarte  is  seea  probably  in  n37Dn,  DS^pnn  {■■^upra.  p.  46, 


68  THE    WORSHIPPER  LECT.  ii. 

are    found    even   among    the    Arabs    of    the    Syrian    and 
Egyptian  frontier.^ 

Where  the  god  is  conceived  as  a  king,  he  will  naturally 
be  addressed  as  lord,  and  his  worshippers  will  be  spoken 
of  as  his  subjects,  and  so  we  find  as  divine  titles  Adou, 
"  lord  "  (whence  Adonis  =  the  god  Tammuz),  and  Eabbath, 
"  lady  "  (as  a  title  of  Tanith),  among  the  Phoenicians,  with 
corresponding  phrases  among  other  nations,^  while  in  all 
parts  of  the  Semitic  field  the  worshipper  calls  himself  the 
servant  or  slave  (aid,  'ebcd)  of  his  god,  just  as  a  subject 
does  in  addressing  his  king.  The  designation  "  servant "  is 
much  affected  by  worshippers,  and  forms  the  basis  of  a 
large  number  of  theophorous  proper  names — 'Abd-Eshmun 
"  servant  of  Eshmun,"  'Abd-Baal,  'Abd-Osir,  etc.  At  first 
sight  this  designation  seems  to  point  to  a  more  rigid  con- 
ception of  divine  kingship  than  I  have  presented,  for  it  is 
only  under  a  strict  despotism  that  the  subject  is  the  slave 
of  the  monarch  ;  nay,  it  has  been  taken  as  a  fundamental 
distinction  between  Semitic  religion  and  that  of  the  Greeks 
that  in  the  one  case  the  relation  of  man  to  his  god  is 
servile,  while  in  the  other  it  is  not  so.  But  this  conclu- 
sion rests  on  the  neglect  of  a  nicety  of  language,  a  refine- 
ment of  Semitic  politeness.  When  a  man  addresses  any 
superior  he  calls  him  "  my  lord,"  and  speaks  of  himself  and 

note),  and  more  certainly  in  n3?OnO,  "handmaid  of  the  queen,"  cf. 
mnK>ynO,  No.  83,  ami  in  nD^OyJ,  "favour  of  the  queen,"  No  41.  For 
Assyrian  names  of  similar  type  see  Schrader  in  ZDMG.  xxvi.  140  sqq., 
where  also  an  Edomite  king's  name  on  a  cylinder  of  Sennacherib  is  read 
Malik-ramu,  "the  (divine)  king,  is  exalted." 

^  E.g.  Ko,r^a>.a;^«;,  'EA.|£taXa;^;o,-,  "  Cos,  El  is  king,"  i?ey.  Arch.  1870,  pp. 
115,  117;  Schrader,  KAT.  p.  257,  reads  Kausinalak  as  the  name  of  an 
Edomite  king  on  an  inscription  of  Tiglathpileser.  For  the  god  Cans,  or 
Cos,  see  Wellhausen,  Heldenthum,  p.  77  ;  cf.  ZDMG.  1887,  p.  714. 

^  E.g.  Nabata;an  Rah,  "Lord,"  in  the  proper  name  ?K3"1  (Euting  21.3, 
27.14  ;  Waddington  2152,  2189,  2298),  and  at  Gaza  the  god  Marna,  that  is, 
"our Lord,"  both  on  coins  (Head,  p.  680),  and  in  M.  Diaconus,  Vita  Porphyrii, 
§  19  ;  also  at  Kerak,  Wadd.  24 12^?. 


LECT.  ir.  AS   SERVANT.  00 

others  as  "  thy  servants,"  ^  and  this  form  of  politeness  is 
naturally  de  rigucur  in  presence  of  the  king ;  but  where  the 
king  is  not  addressed,  his  "  servants "  mean  his  courtiers 
that  are  in  personal  attendance  on  him,  or  such  of  his 
subjects  as  are  actually  engaged  in  his  service,  for  example, 
his  soldiers.  In  the  Old  Testament  this  usage  is  constant, 
and  the  kinfr's  servants  are  often  distinguished  from  the 
people  at  large.  And  so  the  servants  of  Jehovah  are 
sometimes  the  prophets,  who  hold  a  special  commission 
from  Him ;  at  other  times,  as  often  in  the  Psalms,  His 
worshipping  people  assembled  at  the  temple ;  and  at  other 
times,  as  in  Deutero-Tsaiah,  His  true  servants  as  dis- 
tinguished from  the  natural  Israel,  who  are  His  subjects 
only  in  name.  In  short,  both  in  the  political  and  in  the 
religious  sphere  the  designation  'ahd,  'ebed,  "  servant,"  is 
strictly  correlated  with  the  verb  'abad,  "  to  do  service, 
homage,  or  religious  worship,"  a  word  which,  as  we  have 
already  seen,  is  sufficiently  elastic  to  cover  the  service 
which  a  son  does  for  his  father,  as  well  as  that  which  a 
master  requires  from  his  slave.^  Thus,  when  a  man  is 
named  the  servant  of  a  god,  the  implication  appears  to  be, 
not  merely  that  he  belongs  to  the  community  of  which  the 
god  is  king,  but  that  he  is  specially  devoted  to  his  service 
and  worship.  Like  other  theophorous  names,  compounds 
with  'abd  seem  to  have  been  originally  most  common  in 
royal  and  priestly  families,  whose  members  naturally 
claimed  a  special  interest  in  religion  and  a  constant  near- 
ness to  the  god  ;  and  in  later  times,  when  a  man's  particular 

'  This  holds  good  for  Hebrew  and  Aramaic  ;  also  for  Phcenician  (Schroder, 
Phmi.  Spr.  p.  18,  n.  5);  and  even  in  Arabia  an  old  poet  says,  "I  am  the 
slave  of  my  guest  as  long  as  he  is  with  me,  but  save  in  this  there  is  no 
trace  of  the  slave  in  my  nature  "  {HamCisa,  p.  729). 

■■^  Supra,  p.  60.  rrimjirily  nay  is  "to  work,"  and  in  Aramaic  "to 
make,  to  do."  Ancient  worship  is  viewed  as  work  or  service,  because  it 
consists  in  material  operations  (sacrifice).  The  same  connection  of  ideas 
appears  in  the  root  n?D  and  iu  the  Greek  /s?{/w  ^if. 


70  THE   GOD   AS   A   CHIEF  Lect.  ir. 

worship  was  not  rigidly  defined  by  his  national  connection, 
they  served  to  specify  the  cult  to  which  he  was  particularly 
attached,  or  the  patron  to  whom  his  parents  dedicated  him. 
That  the  use  of  such  names  was  not  connected  with  the 
idea  of  slavery  to  a  divine  despot  is  pretty  clear  from  their 
frequency  among  the  Arabs,  who  had  very  loose  ideas  of 
all  authority,  whether  human  or  divine.  Among  the 
Arabs,  indeed,  as  among  the  old  Hebrews,  the  relation  of 
the  subject  to  his  divine  chief  is  often  expressed  by  names 
of  another  class.  Of  King  Saul's  sons  two  were  named 
Ishbaal  and  Meribaal,  both  meaning  "  man  of  Baal,"  i.e.  of 
Jehovah,  who  in  these  early  days  was  called  Baal  without 
offence ;  among  the  Arabs  of  the  Syrian  frontier  we  have 
Amriel,  "  man  of  El,"  Amrishams,  "  man  of  the  Sun-god," 
and  others  like  them  ;  ^  and  in  Arabia  proper  Imraulcais, 
"  the  man  of  Cais,"  Shai'  al-Lat,  "  follower,  comrade  of  Lat," 
all  expressive  of  the  relation  of  the  free  warrior  to  his  chief. 
That  the  Arabs,  like  their  northern  congeners,  thought 
of  deity  as  lordship  or  chieftainship,  is  proved  not  only  by 
such  proper  names,  and  by  the  titles  rahb,  rahba,  "  lord," 
"  lady,"  given  to  their  gods  and  goddesses,  but  especially 
by  the  history  of  the  foundation  of  Islam.  In  his  quality 
of  prophet,  Mohammed  became  a  judge,  lawgiver,  and 
captain,  not  of  his  own  initiative,  but  because  the  Arabs  of 
different  clans  were  willing  to  refer  to  a  divine  authority 
questions  of  right  and  precedence  in  which  they  would  not 
yield  to  one  another.  They  brought  their  difficulties  to 
the  prophet  as  the  Israelites  did  to  Moses,  and  his  decisions 
became  the  law  of  Islam,  as  those  of  Moses  were  the 
foundation  of  the  Hebrew  Torah.  But  up  to  the  time  of 
the  prophet  the  practical  development  of  the  idea  of  divine 
kingship  among  the  nomadic  Arabs  was  very  elementary 
and  inadequate,  as  was  to  be  expected  in  a  society  whicli 

^  'Noldeke,  Silz2in'jsb.  Beii,  Ac.  1880,  p.  768 ;  Wellhausen,  Heidenthum,  p.  3. 


LKCT.  ir. 


IN   ARABIA.  71 


had  never  taken  kindly  to  the  institution  of  human  kin<;- 
ship.  In  the  prosperous  days  of  Arabian  commerce,  when 
the  precious  wares  of  the  far  East  reached  the  Mediter- 
ranean chiefly  by  caravan  from  Southern  Arabia,  tliere  were 
settled  kingdoms  in  several  parts  of  the  peninsula.  But 
after  the  sea-route  to  India  was  opened,  these  kingdoms 
were  broken  up,  and  almost  the  whole  country  fell  back 
into  anarchy.  The  nomads  proper  often  felt  the  want 
of  a  controlling  authority  that  would  put  an  end  to  the 
incessant  tribal  and  clan  feuds,  but  their  pride  and  im- 
patience of  control  never  permitted  them  to  be  long  faithful 
to  the  authority  of  a  stranger ;  while,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  exaggerated  feeling  for  kindred  made  it  quite  certain 
that  a  chief  chosen  at  home  would  not  deal  with  an  even 
hand  between  his  own  kinsman  and  a  person  of  different 
blood.  Thus  after  the  fall  of  the  Yemenite  and  Nabattean 
kingdoms,  which  drew  their  strength  from  commerce,  there 
was  no  permanently  successful  attempt  to  consolidate 
a  body  of  several  tribes  into  a  homogeneous  state,  except 
under  Eoman  or  Persian  suzerainty.  The  decay  of 
the  power  of  religion  in  the  peninsula  in  the  last  days 
of  Arab  heathenism  presents  a  natural  parallel  to  this 
condition  of  political  disintegration.  The  wild  tribesmen 
had  lost  the  feeling  of  kinship  with  their  tribal  gods,  and 
had  not  learned  to  yield  steady  submission  and  obedience 
to  any  power  dissociated  from  kinship.  Their  religion  sat 
as  loose  on  them  as  their  allegiance  to  this  or  that  human 
king  whom  for  a  season  they  might  find  it  convenient 
to  obey,  and  they  were  as  ready  to  renounce  their  deities 
in  a  moment  of  petulance  and  disgust  as  to  transfer  tlicir 
service  from  one  petty  sovereign  to  another.' 

Up  to  this  point  we  have  considered  the  conception,  or 

'  Eeligion  had  more  strength  in  towns  like  Mecca  and  Tiiif,  where  there 
was  a  sanctuary,  and  the  deity  lived  in  the  midst  of  his  people,  and  was 


72  •  KINGSHIP    IN    THE    EAST 


LECT.   IT. 


rather  the  institution,  of  divine   sovereignty  as  based  on 

the  fundamental  type  of  Semitic  kingship,  when  the  nation 

was  still  made  up  of  free  tribesmen,  retaining  their  tribal 

organisation  and  possessing  the  sense  of  personal  dignity 

and  independence  engendered  by  the  tribal  system,  where 

all  clansmen  are  brothers,  and  where  each  man  feels  that 

liis  brethren  need  him  and  that  he  can  count  on  the  help 

of  his  brethren.     There  is  no  principle  so  levelling  as  the 

law    of   blood  -  revenge,  which  is   the   basis   of   the   tribal 

system,   for   here   the   law   is   man   for    man,  whether  in 

defence  or  in  offence,  without  respect  of  persons.      In  such 

a  society  the  king  is  a  guiding  and  moderating  force  rather 

than  an  imperial  poVer ;  he  is  the  leader  under  whom  men 

of  several  tribes  unite  for  common  action,  and  the  arbiter 

in  cases  of  difficulty  or  of  irreconcilable  dispute  between 

two  kindreds,  when  neither  will  humble  itself  before  the 

other.     The  kingship,  and  therefore  the  godhead,  is  not  a 

principle  of  absolute  order  and  justice,  but  it  is  a  principle 

of  higher   order  and  more  impartial  justice   than  can  be 

realised  where  there  is  no  other  law  than  the  obligation 

of  blood.     As  the  king  waxes  stronger,  and  is  better  able 

to  enforce  his  will  by  active  interference  in  his  subjects' 

quarrels,  the  standard  of  right  is  gradually  raised  above  the 

consideration  which  disputant  has  the  strongest  kin  to  back 

liim,  for  it  is  the  glory  of   the  sovereign  to  vindicate  the 

cause  of  the  weak,  if  only  because  by  so  doing  he  shows 

himself  to  be  stronger  than  the  strong.     And  as  the  god, 

though  not  conceived  as  omnipotent,  is  at  least  conceived 

as    rriuch    stronger   than    man,   he    becomes   in   a   special 

honoured  by  stated  and  frequent  acts  of  worship.  So  under  Islam,  the 
Bedouins  have  never  taken  kindly  to  the  laws  of  the  Coran,  and  live  in 
entire  neglect  of  the  most  simple  ordinances  of  religion,  while  the  townsmen 
are  in  their  way  very  devout.  Much  of  this  religion  is  hypocrisy  ;  but  so  it 
was,  to  judge  by  the  accounts  of  the  conversion  of  the  Thacif  at  Taif,  even  in 
the  time  of  Mohammed.  Religion  was  a  matter  of  custom,  of  keeping  up 
a2)pearances. 


LFXT.  II.  AND    IN    THE   WEST.  73 


measure  the  champion  of  right  against  might,  the  protector 
of  the  poor,  the  widow,  and  the  fatherless,  of  the  man  who 
has  no  helper  on  earth. 

Now  it  is  matter  of  constant  observation  in  early  history 
that  the  primitive  equality  of  the  tribal  system  tends  in 
progress  of  time  to  transform  itself  into  an  aristocracy  of 
the  more  powerful  kins,  or  of  the  more  powerful  families 
within  one  kin.  That  is,  the  smaller  and  weaker  kins  are 
content  to  place  themselves  in  a  position  of  dependence 
on  their  more  powerful  neighbours  in  order  to  secure  their 
protection ;  or  even  within  one  and  the  same  kin  men  begin 
to  distinguish  between  their  nearer  and  more  distant  cousins, 
and,  as  wealth  begins  to  be  unequally  distributed,  the  great 
man's  distant  and  poor  relation  has  to  be  content  with  a 
distant  and  supercilious  patronage,  and  sinks  into  a  position 
of  inferiority.  The  kingship  is  the  one  social  force  that 
works  against  this  tendency,  for  it  is  the  king's  interest  to 
maintain  a  balance  of  power,  and  prevent  the  excessive 
aggrandisement  of  noble  families  that  might  compete  with 
his  own  authority.  Thus  even  for  selfish  reasons  the 
sovereign  is  more  and  more  brought  into  the  position  of 
the  champion  of  the  weak  against  the  strong,  of  the  masses 
against  the  aristocracy.  Generally  speaking,  the  struggle 
between  king  and  nobles  to  which  these  conditions  give 
rise  ended  differently  in  the  East  and  in  tlie  West.  In 
Greece  and  Eome  the  kingship  fell  before  the  aristocracy  ; 
in  Asia  the  kingship  held  its  own,  till  in  the  larger  states 
it  developed  into  despotism,  or  in  the  smaller  ones  it  was 
crushed  by  a  foreign  despotism.  This  diversity  of  political 
fortune  is  reflected  in  tlie  diversity  of  religious  develop- 
ment. For  as  the  national  god  did  not  at  first  supersede 
tribal  and  family  deities  any  more  than  the  king  super- 
seded tribal  and  family  institutions,  the  tendency  of  the 
West,   where    the    kingship    succumbed,    was    towards    a 


74  MONARCHY    AND  lect.  ii. 


divine  aristocracy  of  many  gods,  only  modified  by  a  weak 
reminiscence  of  the  old  kingship  in  the  not  very  effective 
sovereignty  of  Zeus,  while  in  the  East  the  national  god 
tended  to  acquire  a  really  monarchic  sway.  What  is 
often  described  as  the  natural  tendency  of  Semitic  religion 
towards  ethical  monotheism,  is  in  the  main  nothing  more 
than  a  consequence  of  the  alliance  of  religion  with 
monarchy.  For  however  corrupt  the  actual  kingships  of 
the  East  became,  the  ideal  of  the  kingship  as  a  source  of 
even-handed  justice  throughout  the  whole  nation,  without 
respect  of  persons,  was  higher  than  the  ideal  of  aristocracy, 
in  which  each  noble  is  expected  to  favour  his  own  family 
even  at  the  expense  of  the  state  or  of  justice ;  and  it  is  on 
the  ideal,  rather  than  on  the  actual,  that  religious  concep- 
tions are  based,  if  not  in  ordinary  minds,  at  least  in  the 
minds  of  more  thoughtful  and  pious  men.  At  the  same 
time  the  idea  of  absolute  and  ever-watchful  divine  justice, 
as  we  find  it  in  the  prophets,  is  no  more  natural  to  the 
East  than  to  the  West,  for  even  the  ideal  Semitic  king  is, 
as  we  have  seen,  a  very  imperfect  earthly  providence,  and 
moreover  he  has  a  different  standard  ^of  right  for  his  own 
people  and  for  strangers.  The  prophetic  idea  that  Jehovah 
will  vindicate  the  right  even  in  the  destruction  of  his  own 
people  of  Israel,  involves  an  ethical  standard  as  foreign  to 
Semitic  as  to  Aryan  tradition.  Thus,  as  regards  their 
ethical  tendency,  the  difference  between  Eastern  and  Western 
religion  is  one  of  degree  rather  than  of  principle ;  all  that 
we  can  say  is  that  the  East  was  better  prepared  to  receive 
the  idea  of  a  god  of  absolute  righteousness,  because  its 
political  institutions  and  history,  and  not  least  the  enor- 
mous gulf  between  the  ideal  and  the  reality  of  human 
sovereignty,  directed  men's  minds  to  appreciate  the  need  of 
righteousness  more  strongly,  and  accustomed  them  to  look 
to  a  power  of  monarchic  character  as  its  necessary  source. 


LECT.  II.  MONOTHEISM.  75 


A  similar  jiulgnient  iiuist  be  passed  on  the  supposed  mono- 
theistic tendency  of  the  Semitic  as  opposed  to  the  Hellenic 
or  Aryan  system  of  religion.  Neither  system,  in  its  natural 
development,  can  fairly  be  said  to  have  come  near  to 
monotheism ;  the  difference  touched  only  the  equality  or 
subordination  of  divine  powers.  But  while  in  Greece  the 
idea  of  the  unity  of  God  was  a  philosoi)hical  speculation, 
without  any  definite  point  of  attachment  to  actual  religion, 
the  monotheism  of  the  Hebrew  prophets  kept  touch  with 
the  ideas  and  institutions  of  the  Semitic  race  by  conceiving 
the  one  true  God  as  the  king  of  absolute  justice,  the 
national  God  of  Israel,  who  at  the  same  time  was,  or 
rather  was  destined  to  become,  the  God  of  all  the  earth, 
not  merely  l)ecause  His  power  was  world-wide,  but  because 
as  the  perfect  ruler  He  could  not  fail  to  draw  all  nations 
to  do  Him  homage  (Isa.  ii.  2  sqq). 

When  I  speak  of  the  way  in  which  the  prophets  con- 
ceived of  Jehovah's  sovereignty,  as  destined  to  extend  itself 
beyond  Israel  and  over  all  the  earth,  I  touch  on  a  feature 
common  to  all  Semitic  religions,  which  must  be  explainctl 
and  defineil  before  we  can  properly  understand  wherein 
the  prophets  transcended  the  common  sphere  of  Semitic 
thought,  and  which  indeed  is  necessary  to  complete  our 
view  of  the  ultimate  development  of  the  Semitic  religions 
as  tribal  and  national  institutions. 

From  a  very  early  date  the  Semitic  communities  em- 
braced, in  addition  to  the  free  tribesmen  of  pure  blood 
(Heb.  ezruh,  Arab,  sari/i)  with  their  families  and  slaves,  a 
class  of  men  who  were  personally  free  but  had  no  political 
rights,  viz.  the  protected  strangers  (Heb.  gerlm,  sing,  ger  ; 
Aral),  jlrdn,  sing,  jar),  of  whom  mention  is  so  often  made 
both  in  the  Old  Testament  and  in  early  Arabic  literature. 
The  gcr  was  a  man  of  another  tribe  or  district  who,  coming 
to  sojourn  in  a  place  where  he  was  not  strengthened  by 


76  THE   WORSHIPPER   AS  lect.  ir. 

the  presence  of  his  own  kin,  put  himself  under  the  protec- 
tion of  a  clan  or  of  a  powerful  chief.  From  the  earliest 
times  of  Semitic  life  the  lawlessness  of  the  desert,  in  which 
every  stranger  is  an  enemy,  has  been  tempered  by  the 
principle  that  the  guest  is  inviolable.  A  man  is  safe  in 
the  midst  of  enemies  as  soon  as  he  enters  a  tent  or  even 
touches  the  tent  rope.^  To  harm  a  guest,  or  to  refuse  him 
hospitality,  is  an  offence  against  honour,  which  covers  the 
perpetrator  with  indelible  shame.  The  bond  of  hospitality 
among  the  Arabs  is  temporary ;  the  guest  is  entertained  for 
a  night  or  at  most  for  three  days,^  and  the  protection 
which  the  host  owes  to  him  expires  after  three  days  more.^ 
But  more  permanent  protection  is  seldom  refused  to  a 
stranger  who  asks  for  it,*  and  when  granted  by  any  tribes- 
man it  binds  the  whole  tribe.  The  obligation  thus  con- 
stituted is  one  of  honour,  and  not  enforced  by  any  human 
sanction  except  public  opinion,  fur  if  the  stranger  is  wronged 
he  has  no  kinsmen  to  fight  for  him.  And  for  this  very 
reason  it  is  a  sacred  obligation,  which  among  the  old 
Arabs  was  often  confirmed  by  oath  at  a  sanctuary,  and 
could  not  be  renounced  except  by  a  formal  act  at  the  same 
holy  place,^  so  that  the  god  himself  became  the  protector 
of  the  stranger's  cause.  The  protected  stranger  did  not 
necessarily  give  up  his  old  religion  any  more  than  he  gave 
up  his  old  kindred,  and  in  the  earliest  times  it  is  not  to  be 
supposed  that  he  was  admitted  to  full  communion  in  the 
religion  of  his  protectors,  for  rehgion  went  with  political 
rights.  But  it  was  natural  that  he  should  acknowledge  in 
some  degree  the  god  of  the  land  in  which  he  lived,  and, 

'  See  further  Kinship,  p.  41  sqq. 

^  This  is  the  space  prescribed  by  the  traditions  of  the  prophet,  Hariri  (De 
Sacy's  2nd  ed.  p.  177  ;  of.  Sharishi,  i.  242).  A  viaticum  sufficient  for  a  day's 
journey  should  be  added,  all  beyond  this  is  not  duty  but  alms. 

'  Pmrckhardt,  Bedouins  and  Wahdbys,  i.  336. 

•*  IJurckhardt,  op.  cit.  i.  174. 

*  Ibn  Hisham,  p.  243  nqq.  ;  Kinship,  p.  43. 


LECT.  11.  CLIENT   OF    HIS    GOD.  77 

indeed,  since  the  stated  exercises  of  religion  were  confined 
to  certain  fixed  sanctuaries,  the  man  who  was  far  from  his 
old  home  was  also  far  from  his  own  god,  and  sooner  or 
later  could  hardly  fail  to  lose  his  old  religion,  and  become 
a  dependent  adherent  of  the  cult  of  his  patrons,  though 
not  with  rights  equal  to  theirs.  Sometimes,  indeed,  the 
god  was  the  direct  patron  of  the  ger,  a  thing  easily  under- 
stood when  we  consider  that  a  common  motive  for  seeking 
foreign  protection  was  the  fear  of  the  avenger  of  blood,  and 
that  there  was  a  right  of  asylum  at  sanctuaries.  From  a 
Phoenician  inscription  found  near  Larnaca,  which  gives  the 
monthly  accounts  of  a  temple,  we  learn  that  the  gerlm 
formed  a  distinct  class  in  the  personnel  of  the  sanctuary 
and  received  certain  allowances,^  just  as  we  know  from 
Ezek.  xliv.  that  much  of  the  service  of  the  first  temple 
was  done  by  uncircumcised  foreigners.  This  notion  of  the 
temple-client,  the  man  who  lives  in  the  precincts  of  the 
sanctuary  under  the  special  protection  of  the  god,  is  used  in 
a  figurative  sense  in  Psalm  xv.,  "  Who  shall  sojourn  {ydgur, 
i.e.  live  as  a  ger)  in  Thy  tabernacles  ? "  and  similarly  the 
Arabs  give  the  title  of  jar  alldh  to  one  who  resides  in 
Mecca  beside  the  Caaba. 

The  importance  of  this  occasional  reception  of  strangers 
was  not  great  so  long  as  the  old  national  divisions  remained 
untouched,  and  the  proportion  of  foreigners  in  any  com- 
munity was  small.  But  the  case  became  very  different 
when  the  boundaries  of  nations  were  changed  by  tlie 
migration  of  tribes,  or  by  the  wholesale  deportations  that 
were  part  of  the  policy  of  the  Assyrians  towards  conquered 
countries  where  their  arms  had  met  with  strenuous  resist- 
ance. In  such  circumstances  it  was  natural  for  the  new- 
comers to  seek  admission  to  the  sanctuaries  of  the  "  god  of 
the  land," "  which  they  were  able  to  do  by  presenting 
1  C.I.S.  No.  86.  «  2  Kings  xvii.  26. 


78'  THE   WORSHIPPER    AS  LECT.  n. 

themselves  as  his  clients.  In  such  a  case  the  clients  of 
the  god  were  not  necessarily  in  a  position  of  political 
dependence  on  his  old  worshippers,  and  the  religious  sense 
of  the  term  ger  became  detached  from  the  idea  of  social 
inferiority.  But  the  relation  of  the  new  worshippers  to 
the  god  was  no  longer  the  same  as  on  the  old  purely 
national  system.  It  was  more  dependent  and  less  per- 
manent ;  it  was  constituted,  not  by  nature  and  inherited 
privilege,  but  by  submission  on  the  worshipper's  side  and 
free  bounty  on  the  side  of  the  god  ;  and  in  every  way  it 
tended  to  make  the  relation  between  man  and  god  more 
distant,  to  make  men  fear  the  god  more  and  tlirow  more 
servility  into  their  homage,  while  at  the  same  time  the 
higher  feelings  of  devotion  were  quickened  by  the  thought 
that  the  protection  and  favour  of  the  god  was  a  thing  of 
free  grace  and  not  of  national  right.  How  important  this 
change  was  may  be  judged  from  the  Old  Testament,  where 
the  idea  that  the  Israelites  are  Jehovah's  clients,  sojourning 
in  a  land  where  they  have  no  rights  of  their  own,  but  are 
absolutely  dependent  on  His  bounty,  is  one  of  the  most 
characteristic  notes  of  the  new  and  more  timid  type  of 
piety  that  distinguishes  post -exilic  Judaism  from  the 
religion  of  Old  Israel.^  In  the  old  national  religions  a 
man  felt  sure  of  his  standing  with  the  national  god,  unless 
he  forfeited  it  by  a  distinct  breach  of  social  law ;  but  the 
client  is  accepted,  so  to  speak,  on  his  good  behaviour,  an 
idea  which  precisely  accords  with  the  anxious  legality  of 
Judaism  after  the  captivity. 

In  Judaism  the  spirit  of  legality  was  allied  with  genuine 
moral  earnestness,  as  we  see  in  the  noble  description  of  the 
character  that  befits  Jehovah's  ger  drawn  in  Psalm  xv.; 
but  among  the  heathen  Semites  we  find  the  same  spirit  of 
legalism,  the  same  timid  uncertainty  as  to  a  man's  standing 

'  Lev.  XXV.  23;  Ps.  xxxix.  12  [Heb.  13];  Ps.  cxix.  19;  1  Chrcai.  xxix.  15. 


LECT.  II.  CLIENT    OF    HIS    GOD.  79 

with  the  god  whose  protection  he  seeks,  while  the  con- 
ception of  what  is  pleasing  to  the  deity  has  not  attained 
the  same  ethical  elevation.  The  extent  to  which,  in  the 
disintegi-ation  of  the  old  nationalities  of  the  P^ast  and 
the  constant  movements  of  population  due  to  political 
disturbance,  men's  religion  detached  itself  from  their  local 
and  national  connections,  is  seen  by  the  prevalence  of  names 
in  which  a  man  is  designated  the  client  of  the  god.  In 
Phoenician  inscriptions  we  find  a  whole  series  of  men's 
names  compounded  with  Gcr, — Gerinelkarth,  Gerastart,  and 
so  forth, — and  the  same  type  recurs  among  the  Arabs  of 
Syria  in  the  name  Gairelos  or  Gerelos,  "  client  of  El."  ^  In 
Arabia  proper,  where  the  relation  of  protector  and  protected 
had  a  great  development,  and  whole  clans  were  wont  to 
attach  themselves  as  dependants  to  a  more  powerful  tribe, 
the  conception  of  god  and  worshipper  as  patron  and  client 
appears  to  have  been  specially  predominant,  not  merely 
because  dependent  clans  took  up  the  religion  of  the  patrons 
with  whom  they  took  refuge,  but  because  of  the  frequent 
sliiftings  of  the  tribes.  Wellhausen  has  noted  that  the 
hereditary  priesthoods  of  Arabian  sanctuaries  were  often  in 
the  hands  of  families  that  did  not  belong  to  the  tribe  of 
the  worshippers,  but  apparently  were  descended  from  older 
inhabitants ;  ^  and  in  such  cases  the  modern  worshippers 
were  really  only  clients  of  a  foreign  god.  So,  in  fact,  at 
the  great  Sabean  pilgrimage  shrine  of  Iiiyfim,  the  god 
Ta'lab  is  adored  as  "  patron,"  and  his  worshippers  are  called 
his  clients."  To  the  same  conception  may  be  assigned  the 
proper  name  Salm,  "  submission,"  shortened  from  such 
theophorous  forms  as  the  Talmyrene  Salm  al-Lat,  "submission 

J  See  Nlildeke,  Sitzimr/.ih   Bed.  Ak.  1880,  p.  765. 
-  Wellhausen,  llcidenthum,  p.  129  ;  cf.  p.  183. 

»  Mordtmann  u.  Miiller,  Sab.  Denkm.  p.  22,  No,  5,  1.  2  i^q.  (lonct'),  1.  8 
Hij.  (inOIN)  etc.     Cf.  No.  13,  1.  12,  HOnK,  the  clients  of  the  goddess  .Shams. 


80  THE   WORSHIPPER   AS  lect.  ii. 

to  Lat,"  ^  and  corresponding  to  the  religious  use  of  the  verb 
istalama,  "he  made  his  peace,"  to  designate  the  ceremony 
of  kissing,  stroking,  or  embracing  the  sacred  stone  at  the 
Caaba  ;  *  and,  further,  the  numerous  names  compounded  with 
Taim,  which  also,  if  we  may  judge  by  the  profane  use  of  the 
word,  as  applied  to  a  deeply  attached  lover,  denotes  one 
who  voluntarily  submits  himself  to  the  god.  But  above 
all,  the  prevalence  of  religion  based  on  clientship  and 
voluntary  homage  is  seen  in  the  growth  of  the  practice  of 
pilgrimage  to  distant  shrines,  which  is  so  prominent  a 
feature  in  later  Semitic  heathenism.  Almost  all  Arabia 
met  at  Mecca,  and  the  shrine  at  Hierapolis  drew  visitors 
from  the  whole  Semitic  world.  These  pilgrims  were  the 
guests  of  the  god,  and  were  received  as  such  by  the 
inhabitants  of  the  holy  places.  They  approached  the  god 
as  strangers,  not  with  the  old  joyous  confidence  of  national 
worship,  but  with  atoning  ceremonies  and  rites  of  self- 
mortification,  and  their  acts  of  worship  were  carefully 
prescribed  for  them  by  qualified  instructors,^  the  proto- 
types of  the  modern  Meccan  Motawwif.  The  progress  of 
heathenism  towards  universalism,  as  it  is  displayed  in  these 
usages,  seemed  only  to  widen  the  gulf  between  the  deity 
and  man,  to  destroy  the  naive  trustfulness  of  the  old 
religion  without  substituting  a  better  way  for  man  to  be  at 
one  with  his  god,  to  weaken  the  moral  ideas  of  nationality 
without  bringing  in  a  higher  morality  of  universal  obliga- 
tion, to  transform  the  divine  kingship  into  a  mere  court 
pageant  of  priestly  ceremonies  without  permanent  influence 
on  the  order  of  society  and  daily  life.     The  Hebrew  ideal 

1  De  Vogii^,  No.  54. 

2  Ibn  Doraid,  Kit.  al-ishiicdc,  p.  22.  The  same  idea  of  a  religion  accepted 
by  voluntary  submission  is  expressed  in  the  name  Islam.  We  shall  see  later 
that  much  the  same  idea  underlies  the  designation  of  the  Christian  religion 
as  a  "  mystery." 

^  Lucian,  De  Dea  Syria,  Ivi. 


LECT.    II. 


CLIENT   OF   HIS    GOD.  81 


of  a  divine  kingship  that  must  one  day  draw  all  men  to  do 
it  liomage  offered  better  things  than  these,  not  in  virtue  of 
any  feature  that  it  possessed  in  common  with  the  Semitic 
religions  as  a  whole,  but  solely  in  virtue  of  its  unique  con- 
ception of  Jehovah  as  a  God  whose  love  for  His  people  was 
conditioned  by  a  law  of  absolute  righteousness.  In  other 
nations  individual  thinkers  rose  to  lofty  conceptions  of  a 
supreme  deity,  but  in  Israel,  and  in  Israel  alone,  these 
conceptions  were  incorporated  in  the  accepted  worship  of 
the  national  god.  And  so  of  all  the  gods  of  the  nations 
Jehovah  alone  was  fitted  to  become  the  God  of  the  whole 
earth. 


LECTURE  III. 

THE    RELATIONS    OF    THE    GODS    TO    NATURAL    THINGS 

HOLY    PLACES THE    JINN. 

In  the  last  lecture  I  endeavoured  to  sketch  in  broad  out- 
line the  general  features  of  the  religious  institutions  of  the 
Semites  in  so  far  as  they  rest  on  the  idea  that  gods  and 
men,  or  rather  the  god  and  his  own  proper  worshippers, 
make  up  a  single  community,  and  that  the  place  of  the 
god  in  the  community  is  interpreted  on  the  analogy  of 
human  relationships.  Our  business  in  this  enquiry  was 
not  to  ask  what  the  gods  were  in  themselves,  but  only  to 
see  what  part  they  held  in  the  social  organism,  as  kinsmen, 
fathers,  sovereigns  or  patrons  of  their  worshippers.  We 
are  now  to  follow  out  this  point  of  view  through  the 
details  of  sacred  rite  and  observance,  and  to  consider  how 
the  various  acts  and  offices  of  religion  stand  related  to  the 
place  assigned  to  the  deity  in  the  community  of  his  wor- 
shippers. But  as  soon  as  we  begin  to  enter  on  these 
details  we  find  it  necessary  to  take  account  of  a  new  series 
of  relations  connecting  man  on  the  one  hand,  and  his  god 
on  the  other,  with  physical  nature  and  material  objects. 
All  acts  of  ancient  worship  have  a  material  embodiment, 
wliich  is  not  left  to  the  choice  of  the  worshipper  but  is 
limited  by  fixed  rules.  They  must  be  performed  at  certain 
places  and  at  certain  times,  with  the  aid  of  certain  material 
appliances  and  according  to  certain  mechanical  forms. 
These  rules  import  that  the  intercourse  between  the  deity 


LECT.  III.  THE   flODS    AND    NATURE.  fi3 

and  his  worshippers  is  subject  to  physical  conditions  of  a 
definite  kind,  and  this  again   implies    that    the    relations 
between  gods  and  men  are  not  independent  of  the  material 
environment.      The  relations  of  a  man   to  his  fellow-men 
are  limited  by  physical  conditions,  because  man,  on  the  side 
of  his  bodily  organism,  is  liimself   a  part  of  tlie  material 
universe,  and,  when  we  find  that  the  relations  of  a  man  to 
his  god  are  limited  in  the  same  way,  we  are  led  to  conclude 
that  the  gods  too  are  in  some  sense  conceived  to  be  a  part 
of  the  natural  universe,  and  that  tliis  is  the  reason  why 
men  can  hold    converse    with    them   only   by  the  aid    of 
certain   material   things.      It  is  true  that  in  some  of  the 
higher  forms  of  antique  religion  the  material  restrictions 
imposed  on  the  legitimate    intercourse  between  gods  and 
men  were  conceived  to  be  not  natural  but  positive,  that 
is  they  were  not  held  to   be   dependent  on  the  nature  of 
the    gods,  but  were  looked  upon  as    arbitrary    rules    laid 
down  by  the  free  will  of  the   deity.      But  in  the  ordinary 
forms  of  heathenism  it  appears  quite  plainly  that  the  gods 
themselves  are  not  exempt  from  the  general  limitations  of 
physical    existence ;    indeed    we    have    already    seen    that 
where  the  relation  of  the  deity  to  his  worshippers  is  con- 
ceived as   a  relation   of  kinship,  the  kinship   is  taken   to 
have  a  physical  as  well  as  a  moral  sense,  so  that  the  wor- 
shipped and  the  worshippers  are   parts  not   only  of    one 
social  community  but  of  one  physical  unity  of  life. 

It  is  important  that  we  should  realise  to  ourselves  with 
some  defiuiteness  the  primitive  view  of  the  universe  in 
which  this  conception  arose,  and  in  which  it  has  its  natural 
I)lace.  It  is  to  be  noted  that  the  oldest  institutions  of 
religion — and  by  this  I  do  not  mean  such  institutions  only 
as  became  obsolete  at  an  early  date,  but  such  as  survived 
and  played  a  considerable  part  in  religious  life  down  o| 
the  later  ages  of  heathenism — carry  with  them  evidence  tok,  o  ^ 


84  THE   GODS   AIST)  lect.  hi. 


a  conclusive  kind,  referring  their  origin  to  a  time  when 
men  had  not  learned  to  draw  sharp  distinctions  between 
the  nature  of  one  thing  and  another.  Savages,  we  know, 
are  not  only  incapable  of  separating  in  thought  between 
phenomenal  and  noumenal  existence,  but  habitually  ignore 
the  distinctions,  which  to  us  seem  obvious,  between  organic 
and  inorganic  nature,  or  within  the  former  region  between 
animals  and  plants.  Arguing  altogether  by  analogy,  and 
concluding  from  the  known  to  the  unknown  with  the 
freedom  of  men  who  do  not  know  the  difference  between 
the  imagination  and  the  reason,  they  ascribe  to  all  material 
objects  a  life  analogous  to  that  which  their  own  self-con- 
sciousness reveals  to  them.  They  see  that  men  are  liker 
to  one  another  than  beasts  are  to  men,  that  men  are  liker 
to  beasts  than  they  are  to  plants,  and  to  plants  than  they 
are  to  stones  ;  but  all  things  appear  to  them  to  live,  and 
the  more  incomprehensible  any  form  of  life  seems  to  them 
the  more  wonderful  and  worthy  of  reverence  do  they  take 
it  to  be.  Now  this  attitude  of  man  to  the  natural  things 
by  which  he  is  surrounded — an  attitude  which  in  modern 
times  is  known  to  us  only  by  observation  among  savage 
races — is  the  very  attitude  attested  to  us  for  ancient  times 
by  some  of  the  most  salient  features  of  antique  religion. 
Among  races  which  have  attained  to  a  certain  degree  of 
culture  the  predominant  conception  of  the  gods  is  anthro- 
pomorphic, that  is  they  are  supposed  on  the  whole  to 
resemble  men  and  act  like  men,  and  the  artistic  imagina- 
tion, whether  in  poetry  or  in  sculpture  and  painting,  draws 
them  after  the  similitude  of  man.  But  at  the  same  time 
the  list  of  gods  includes  a  variety  of  natural  objects  of  all 
kinds,  the  sun  moon  and  stars,  the  heavens  and  the  earth, 
animals  and  trees,  or  even  sacred  stones.  And  all  these 
"ods  without  distinction  of  their  several  natures,  are 
conceived  as  entering  into  the   same  kind   of  relation  to 


LKCT.  HI.  NATUEAL    THINGS.  85 

man,  are  approaclied  in  ritual  of  the  same  type,  and  excite 
the  same  kind  of  hopes  and  fears  in  the  breasts  of  their 
worshippers.  It  is  of  course  easy  to  say  that  the  f^oJs 
were  not  identified  with  these  natural  objects,  that  they 
were  only  supposed  to  inhabit  them ;  but  for  our  present 
purpose  this  distinction  is  not  valid.  A  certain  crude 
distinction  between  soul  and  body,  combined  with  the  idea 
that  the  soul  may  act  where  the  body  is  not,  is  suggested 
to  the  most  savage  races  by  familiar  psychical  phenomena, 
particularly  by  those  of  dreams ;  and  the  unbounded  use  of 
analogy  characteristic  of  pre-scientific  thought  extends  this 
conception  to  all  parts  of  nature,  which  becomes  to  the 
savage  mind  full  of  spiritual  forces,  more  or  less  detached 
in  their  movements  and  action  from  the  material  objects 
to  which  they  are  supposed  properly  to  belong.  But  the 
detachment  of  the  invisible  life  from  its  visible  embodiment 
is  never  complete.  A  man  after  all  is  not  a  ghost  or 
phantom,  a  life  or  soul  without  a  body,  but  a  body  with 
its  life,  and  in  like  manner  the  unseen  life  that  inhabits 
the  planet,  tree,  or  sacred  stone  makes  the  sacred  object 
itself  be  conceived  as  a  living  being.  And  in  ritual  the 
sacred  object  was  spoken  of  and  treated  as  the  god  himself ; 
it  was  not  merely  his  symbol  but  his  embodiment,  the 
permanent  centre  of  his  activity  in  the  same  sense  in 
which  the  human  body  is  the  permanent  centre  of  man's 
activity.  The  god  inhabits  the  tree  or  sacred  stone  not  in 
the  sense  in  which  a  man  inhabits  a  house  but  in  the 
sense  in  which  his  soul  inhabits  his  body.  In  short  the 
whole  conception  belongs  in  its  origin  to  a  stage  of  thought 
in  which  there  was  no  more  difUculty  in  ascribing  living 
powers  and  personality  to  a  stone  tree  or  animal,  than  to 
a  being  of  human  or  superhuman  build. 

The   same  lack    of   any  sharp   distinction  between  the 
nature  of  different  kinds  of  visible  beings  appears  in  the 


«S6  GODS   MEN   AXD  lect.  hi. 

oldest  myths,  in  which  all  kinds  of  objects,  animate  and 
inanimate,  organic  and  inorganic,  appear  as  cognate  with 
one  another,  with  men,  and  with  the  gods.  The  kinship 
between  gods  and  men  which  we  have  already  discussed  is 
only  one  part  of  a  larger  kinship  which  embraces  the 
lower  creation.  In  the  Babylonian  legend  beasts  as  well 
as  man  are  formed  of  earth  mingled  with  the  life-blood  of 
a  god ;  in  Greece  the  stories  of  the  descent  of  men  from 
gods  stand  side  by  side  with  ancient  legends  of  men  sprung 
from  trees  or  rocks,  or  of  races  whose  mother  was  a  tree 
and  their  father  a  god.^  Similar  myths,  connecting  both 
men  and  gods  with  animals  plants  and  rocks,  are  found  all 
over  the  world  and  were  not  lacking  among  the  Semites. 
To  this  day  the  legend  of  the  country  explains  the  name 
of  the  Beni  Sokhr  tribe  by  making  them  the  offspring  of 
the  sandstone  rocks  about  Mada'in  Salih."  To  the  same 
stage  of  thought  belong  the  stories  of  transformations  of 
men  into  animals  which  are  not  infrequent  in  Arabian 
legend.  Mohammed  would  not  eat  lizards  because  he 
fancied  them  to  be  the  offspring  of  a  metamorphosed 
clan  of  Israelites.^  MacrizI  relates  of  the  Sei'ar  in 
Haclramaut  that  in  time  of  drought  part  of  the  tribe 
change  themselves  into  ravening  were-wolves.  They  have 
a  magical  means  of  assuming  and  again  casting  off  the 
wolf  shape.'*  Other  Hadramites  changed  themselves  into 
vultures  or  kites.^  In  the  Sinai  Peninsula  the  hyrax  and 
the   panther  are  believed  to  have    been    originally   men." 

1  Odyssey,  xviii.  163  ;  Preller-Robert,  i.  79  sq. 

-  Doughty,  Travels  in  Arabia,  i.  17  ;  see  Ibn  Doraid,  p.  329,  1.  20. 
Conversely  many  stones  and  rocks  in  Aiahia  were  believed  to  be  transformed 
men,  but  especially  women.  Dozy,  Israelitcii  te  Mekka,  p.  201,  gives 
examples.     See  also  Yacut,  i.  123. 

*  Damin",  ii.  88  ;  ef.  Doughty,  i.  326. 

■*  De  valle  JIadhramaut  (Bonn  1866),  p.  19  sq. 

'•"  Ihid.  p.  20.     See  also  Ibn  Mojfiwir  in  Sprenger,  Post-ronten,  j>.  142. 

•^  See  Kinship,  p.  203  sq.,  where  I  give  other  evidences  on  the  point. 


LECT.    III. 


NATURAL   THINGS.  87 


Among  the  northern  Semites  transformation  myths  are 
not  uncommon,  tliough  they  have  generally  been  preserved 
to  us  only  iu  (Ireek  forms.  The  pregnant  mother  of 
Adonis  was  changed  into  a  myrrh  tree,  and  in  the  tenth 
month  the  tree  burst  open  and  the  infant  god  came  forth/ 
The  metamorphosis  of  Derceto  into  a  fish  was  related  both 
at  Ascalon  and  at  Bambyce,  and  so  forth.  In  the  same 
spirit  is  conceived  the  Assyrian  myth  which  includes 
among  the  lovers  of  Ishtar  the  lion  tlie  eagle  and  the 
war-horse,  while  in  the  region  of  plastic  art  the  absence  of 
any  sharp  line  of  distinction  between  gods  and  men  on  the 
one  hand  and  the  lower  creation  on  the  other  is  displayed 
in  the  predilection  for  fantastic  monsters,  half  human  half 
bestial,  which  began  with  the  oldest  Chaldwan  engraved 
cylinders,  gave  Phoenicia  its  cherubim  griffins  and  sphinxes,^ 
and  continued  to  characterise  the  sacred  art  of  the  Baby- 
lonians down  to  the  time  of  Berosus.^  Of  course  most  of 
these  things  can  be  explained  away  as  allegories,  and  are 
so  explained  to  this  day  by  persons  who  shut  their  eyes  to 
the  obvious  difference  between  primitive  thought,  which 
treats  all  nature  as  a  kindred  unity  because  it  has  not  yet 
differentiated  things  into  their  kinds,  and  modern  monistic 
philosophy,  in  which  the  universe  of  things,  after  having 
been  realised  in  its  multiplicity  of  kinds,  is  again  brought 
into  unity  by  a  metaphysical  synthesis.  But  by  what 
process  of  allegory  can  we  explain  away  the  belief  in  were- 
wolves ?  When  the  same  person  is  believed  to  be  now  a 
man  and  now  a  wolf,  the  difference  which  we  recognise 
between    a  man    and    a  wild    beast    is  certainly  not  yet 

^  Apollodonis,  iii.  14.  3  ;  Servius  on  ^n.  v.  72. 

2  See  Menant,  Olyplique  Orientale,  vol.  i. 

'  Berosus  {Fr.  Hist.  dr.  ii.  497)  refers  to  the  images  at  the  temple  of  Bel 
which  preserveil  the  forms  of  the  strange  monsters  tiiat  lived  in  the  time  of 
chaos.  But  the  peculiar  prevalence  of  such  figures  on  the  oldest  gems  shows 
that  the  chaos  in  question  is  only  the  chaotic  imagination  of  early  man. 


88  PHYSICAL   AFFINITIES  lect.  in. 

perceived.  Aiid  such  a  belief  as  this  cannot  be  a  mere 
isolated  extravagance  of  the  fancy  ;  it  points  to  a  view  of 
nature  as  a  whole  which  is,  in  fact,  the  ordinary  view  of 
savages  in  all  parts  of  the  world,  and  everywhere  produces 
just  such  a  confusion  between  the  several  orders  of  natural 
and  supernatural  beings  as  we  find  to  have  existed  among 
tlie  early  Semites. 

The  immediate  inference  from  all  this  is  that  the  origins 
of  Semitic,  and  indeed  of  all  antique  religion,  go  back  to 
a  stage  of  human  thought  in  which  the  question  of  the 
nature  of  the  gods,  as  distinguished  from  other  beings,  did 
not  even  arise  in  any  precise  form,  because  no  one  series 
of  existences  was  strictly  differentiated  from  another.  And 
this  observation  brings  us  back  again  to  the  point  on 
which  I  laid  so  much  stress  in  my  first  lecture.  In  early 
religion  we  have  not  to  consider  the  nature  of  things,  but 
only  the  relations  of  things  to  one  another,  and  the  stated 
forms  of  intercourse  between  the  gods  and  men  to  which 
these  relations  gave  rise.  Whatever  ideas  as  to  the 
specific  divine  nature  grew  up  in  connection  with  the 
development  of  heathen  systems  of  religion  were  second- 
ary formations ;  whereas  sacred  institutions,  in  some  shape 
or  other,  are  primary  and  as  old  as  religion  itself.  The 
gods,  that  is,  were  originally  known  and  regarded  not  in 
themselves,  and  in  their  distinct  entity,  but  in  the  series 
of  orderly  relations  and  stated  activities  that  connected 
them  with  their  worshippers  and  formed  the  basis  of 
fixed  institutions.  The  element  of  order  and  statedness, 
which  makes  fixed  institutions  possible,  was  in  fact  that 
which  made  religion,  as  distinct  from  mere  superstition, 
possible.  Wliere  the  superhuman  forces  of  nature  are 
purely  arbitrary  in  their  dealings  with  men  we  have  not 
religion,  but  only  sorcery  and  magic.  But  these  remarks  are 
a  digression  ;  let  us  return  to  the  course  of  the  argument. 


LECT.   III. 


OF   THE    GODS.  89 


So  far  as  religious  institutions  depend  on  direct  and 
immediate  relations  between  the  gods  and  men  we  have 
already  considered  the  main  types  on  which  they  were 
formed.  But  these  immediate  relations  do  not  exhaust 
the  subject.  Men's  lives  are  conditioned  not  only  by 
their  personal  relations  to  other  men  but  also  by  the 
whole  natural  environment  in  which  they  move  ;  and 
other  lives  affect  mine  not  only  directly,  in  virtue  of  my 
direct  relations  with  certain  persons,  but  in  an  indirect 
way,  in  so  far  as  I  and  others  influence,  and  are  influenced 
by,  the  same  material  surroundings.  Consider,  for  example, 
the  enormous  effects  which  property,  and  the  relations  of 
man  to  man  which  depend  on  property,  have  exercised  on 
the  whole  structure  of  society. 

Now  in  ancient  religion,  as  we  have  seen,  the  gods  have 
what  may  be  called  physical  relations  and  affinities,  not 
only  to  man  but  to  all  kinds  of  natural  objects,  to 
beasts  and  trees  and  inanimate  things.  The  idea  of  the 
metaphysical  transcendency  of  the  godhead  is  altogether 
inconsistent  with  the  view  of  the  universe  which  we  have 
just  been  considering,  in  which  neither  gods  nor  men  are 
sharply  differentiated  from  the  lower  orders  of  beings. 
And  as  that  view  was  never  entirely  superseded  in  ancient 
faith  and  practice,  we  must  expect  to  find,  in  addition  to 
the  direct  relations  between  gods  and  men,  indirect 
relations  due  to  the  fact  that  certain  gods  and  certain 
men  are  brought  into  contact  with  one  another  through 
their  respective  relations  with  the  same  class  of  material 
things.  Gods  as  well  as  men  have  a  physical  environ- 
ment, on  and  through  which  they  act,  and  by  which  their 
activity  is  conditioned. 

The  influence  of  this  idea  on  ancient  religion  is  very 
far-reaching  and  often  difficult  to  analyse.  ]*ut  there  is 
one  aspect  of  it  that  is  both  easily  grasped  and  of  funda- 


90  THE   LOCAL   RELATIONS  lect.  iil 

mental  importance ;  I  mean  the  connection  of  particular 
gods  with  particular  places.  The  most  general  term  to 
express  the  relation  of  natural  things  to  the  gods  which 
our  language  affords  is  the  word  "  holy  ; "  thus  when 
we  speak  of  holy  places,  holy  things,  holy  persons,  holy 
times,  we  imply  that  the  places  things  persons  and  times 
stand  in  some  special  relation  to  the  godhead  or  to  its 
manifestation.  But  the  word  "holy"  has  had  a  long  and 
complicated  history,  and  has  various  shades  of  meaning 
according  to  the  connection  in  which  it  is  used.  It  is  not 
possible,  by  mere  analysis  of  the  modern  use  of  the  word,  to 
arrive  at  a  single  definite  conception  of  the  meaning  of 
holiness ;  nor  is  it  possible  to  fix  on  any  one  of  the  modern 
aspects  of  the  conception,  and  say  that  it  represents  the 
fundamental  idea  from  which  all  other  modifications  of  the 
idea  can  be  deduced.  The  primitive  conception  of  holiness, 
to  which  the  modern  variations  of  the  idea  must  be  traced 
back,  belonged  to  a  primitive  habit  of  thought  with  which 
we  have  lost  touch,  and  we  cannot  hope  to  understand  it 
by  the  aid  of  logical  discussion,  but  only  by  studying  it  on 
its  own  ground  as  it  is  exhibited  in  the  actual  working  of 
early  religion.  It  would  be  idle  therefore  at  this  stage  to 
attempt  any  general  definition,  or  to  seek  for  a  compre- 
hensive formula  covering  all  the  relations  of  the  gods  to 
natural  things.  The  problem  must  be  attacked  in  detail 
before  we  can  seek  its  general  solution,  and  for  many  reasons 
the  most  suitable  point  of  attack  will  be  found  in  the  con- 
nection that  ancient  religion  conceived  to  exist  between 
particular  deities  and  particular  "  holy  "  places.  This  topic 
is  of  fundamental  importance,  because  all  complete  acts  of 
ancient  worship  were  necessarily  performed  at  a  holy  place, 
and  thus  the  local  connections  of  the  gods  are  involved, 
explicitly  or  implicitly,  in  every  function  of  religion. 

The    local    relations    of    the    gods    may    be    considered 


LECT.    III. 


OF    THE    r.ODS.  91 


under  two  heads.  In  the  first  place  the  activity  power 
and  dominion  of  the  gods  were  conceived  as  bounded 
by  certain  local  limits,  and  in  the  second  place  they  were 
conceived  as  having  their  residences  and  homes  at  certain 
fixed  sanctuaries.  These  two  conceptions  are  not  of  course 
independent,  for  generally  speaking  the  region  of  divine 
authority  and  influence  surrounds  the  sanctuary  which  is 
the  god's  principal  seat,  but  for  convenience  of  exposition 
we  shall  look  first  at  the  god's  land  and  then  at  his 
sanctuary  or  dwelling-place. 

Broadly  speaking  the  land  of  a  god  corresponds  witli 
the  land  of  his  worshippers ;  Canaan  is  Jehovah's  land  as 
Israel  is  Jehovah's  people.^  In  like  manner  the  land  of 
Assyria  (Asshur)  has  its  name  from  the  god  Asshur,"  and 
in  general  the  deities  of  the  heathen  are  called  indifferently 
the  gods  of  the  nations  and  the  gods  of  the  lands.^  Our 
natural  impulse  is  to  connect  these  expressions  with  the 
divine  kingship,  which  in  modern  kingdoms  of  feudal 
origin  is  a  sovereignty  over  land  as  well  as  men.  But 
the  older  Semitic  kingdoms  were  not  feudal,  and  before 
the  captivity  we  shall  hardly  find  an  example  of  a 
Semitic  sovereign  being  called  king  of  a  land.'*     In  fact 

1  Hos.  ix.  3  ;  cf.  Relaml,  Palcestina,  vol.  i.  p.  16  nqq. 

2  Schrader,  KAT.  2iul  ed.  p.  35  ft'/q.  ;  cf.  Micah  v.  6  (Hob.  5)  where  tlie 
"  land  of  Asshur  "  stands  in  parallelism  with  "  land  of  Niniiod. "  Ninirod 
is  a  god,  see  his  article  in  Enc.  Brit.,  9th  ed.,  and  Wellhausen,  Hexatench 
(2nd  ed.,  1889),  p.  308  sqq.  On  the  possibility  that  the  Land  of  Uz  has 
its  name  from  the  god  'Aud,  see  above  p.  43,  note. 

^  2  Kings  xviii.  33  sqq. 

*  The  Hebrews  say  "king  of  Asshur"  (Assyria)  Edom  Aram  (Syria)  etc., 
but  these  are  names  of  nations,  the  countries  being  propeily  the  "  land  of 
Asshur  "  etc.  The  local  designation  of  a  king  is  taken  from  his  capital,  or 
royal  seat.  Thus  the  king  of  Israel  is  king  of  Samaria  (1  Kings  xxi.  1), 
Silion,  king  of  the  Amorites,  is  king  of  Heshbon  (Dcut.  iii.  6).  Hiram,  whom 
the  Bilde  calls  king  of  Tyre,  appears  on  the  oldest  of  Phanician  inscriptions 
(C.  /.  S.  No.  5)  as  king  of  the  Sidonians,  i.e.  the  Phieniciaiis  (cf.  1  Kings 
xvi.  31),  Nebuchadnezzar  is  king  of  Babylon,  and  so  forth.  The  only  excep- 
tion to  this  rule  in  old  Hebrew  is,  I  think,  Og  king  of  15ashaii  i^Dcut.  i.  4  ;  1 
Kings  iv.  19),  who  is  a  mythical  figure,  presumably  an  old  god  of  the  region. 


92  THE   GOD   AS  lect.  hi. 


the    relations    of   a    god    to    his    land    were    not    merely 

political,  or  dependent  on  his  relation  to  the  inhabitants. 

The    Arama'ans     and    Babylonians    whom     the     king    of 

Assyria  planted  in  northern  Israel  brought  their  own  gods 

with  them,  but  when   they  were  attacked    by  lions  they 

felt  that  they  must  call   in  the  aid  of   "  the  god  of  the 

land,"  who,  we  must  infer,  had  in  his  own  region  power 

over  beasts  as  well  as    men.^       Similarly   the    Aramseans 

of    Damascus,  after    their    defeat   in    the    hill-country    of 

Samaria,  argue  that  the  gods  of  Israel  are  gods  of  the  hills 

and  will  have  no  power  in  the  plains ;  the  power  of  the 

gods   has    physical     and    local    limitations.       So    too    the 

conception  that  a  god  cannot  be  worsliipped  outside  of  his 

own  land,  which  we  find  applied  even  to  the  worship  of 

Jehovah,^  does    not   simply    mean    that  there   can  be  no 

worship  of  a  god  where  he  has  no  sanctuary,  but  that  the 

land  of  a  strange  god  is  not  a  fit  place  to  erect  a  sanctuary. 

In  the  language  of   the  Old  Testament  foreign  countries 

are  unclean;'  so  that  Naaman,  when  he  desires  to  worship 

the  God  of  Israel  at  Damascus,  has  to  beg  for  two  mules' 

burden  of  the  soil  of  Canaan,  to  make  a  sort  of  enclave 

of  Jehovah's  land  in  his  Aramsean  dwelling-place. 

In  Semitic  religion  the  relation  of  the  gods  to  particular 

places  which  are   special  seats  of  their   power  is  usually 

expressed  by   the    title    Baal  (pi.    Baalim,   fern.  Baalath). 

As  applied  to  men  haal  means  the  master  of  a  house,  the 

owner  of  a  field  cattle  or   the  like ;  or  in  the  plural  the 

baalim  of  a  city  are  its  freeholders  and  full  citizens.*     In  a 

secondary  sense,  in  which  alone  the  word  is  ordinarily  used 

in  Arabic,  haal  means  husband ;  but  it  is  not  used  of  the 

relation  of  a  master  to  his  slave,  or  of   a  superior  to  his 

1  2  Kings  xvii.  24  sqq.  '^  1  Sam.  xxvi.  19  ;  Hos.  ix.  4. 

3  Amos  vii.  17 ;  Josh.  xxii.  19. 

*  So  often  in  the  Old  Testament,  and  also  in  Pluenician.     Baalath  is  used 
of  a  female  citizen  (C.  /.  S.  No.  120). 


LECT.    III. 


BAAL    OF    HIS    LAND.  93 


inferior,  and  it  is  incorrect  to  regard  it,  wlien  employed  as 
u  divine  title,  as  a  mere  synonym  of  the  titles  implying 
lordship  over  men  which  came  before  us  in  the  last  lecture. 
When  a  god  is  simply  called  "  the  Baal,"  the  meaning  is 
not  "  the  lord  of  the  worshipper  "  but  the  possessor  of  some 
place  or  district,  and  each  of  the  multitude  of  local  Baalim 
is  distinguished  by  adding  the  name  of  his  own  place. 
Melcarth  is  the  Baal  of  Tyre,  Astarte  the  Baalath  of  Byblus;^ 
there  was  a  Baal  of  Lebanon,"  of  Mount  Hermon,^  of  Mount 
Peor,  and  so  forth.  In  Southern  Arabia  Baal  constantly 
occurs  in  similar  local  connections,  e.g.  Dim  Samawl  is  the 
Baal  of  the  district  Bacir,  'Athtar  the  Baal  of  Gumdan,  and 
the  sun-goddess  the  Baalath  of  several  places  or  regions.* 

1  C.  /.  S.  Nos.  1,  122.  ^  C.  I.  S.  No.  5. 

s  See  Judg.  iii.  3,  where  tliis  mountain  is  called  the  mountain  of  the  Baal 
of  Hcrmon.  Hernion  jiropeih' means  a  sacred  place.  In  the  Old  Tnstanient 
place-names  like  Ijaal-Peor,  Baal-Meon  are  shortened  from  Beth  Baal  Peor, 
*'  house  or  sanctuary  of  the  Baal  of  Mount  Peor,"  etc. 

*  Special  forms  of  Baal  occur  which  are  defined  not  by  the  name  of  a  place 
or  region  but  in  some  other  way,  e.g.  by  the  name  of  a  sacred  object,  as  Baal- 
Tamar,  "  lord  of  the  palm-tree,"  preserved  to  us  only  in  tlie  name  of  a  town, 
Judg.  XX,  33.  So  too  Baal-Hamman,  on  the  Carthaginian  Tanith  inscrip- 
tions, may  be  primarily  "  Lord  of  the  sun-pillar  ; "  yet  compare  JCPl  7X,  "the 
divinity  of  (the  place)  Hammon  "  (C,  /.  S.  No.  8,  and  the  iuser.  of  ]\Ia'§ub) ; 
see  G.  Hoffmann  in  the  Abhandlungen  of  the  Giittingen  Academy,  vol.  xxxvi. 
(4  May  1889).  Baal-zebub,  the  god  of  Ekron,  is  "owner  of  flies,"  rather  than 
Baax  Mv7a,  the  fly-god.  In  one  or  two  cases  the  title  of  Baal  seems  to  be 
prefixed  to  the  name  of  a  god  ;  thus  we  have  Baal-Zephon  as  a  iilace-namo 
on  the  frontiers  of  Egypt,  and  also  a  god  jQV  (C.  /.  <S'.  Nos.  108,  265). 
Similarly  the  second  element  in  Baal-Gad,  a  town  at  the  foot  of  Jlount 
Hermon,  is  the  name  of  an  ancient  Semitic  god.  The  grammatical  explana- 
tion of  these  forms  is  not  clear  to  me.  Another  peculiar  form  is  Baal-Beritli 
at  Shechem,  which  in  ordinary  Hebrew  simply  means  "possessor  of  covenant," 
i.e.  "covenant  ally,"  but  may  here  signily  the  Baal  who  presides  over  cove- 
nants, or  rather  over  the  special  covenant  by  which  the  neighbouring  Israelites 
were  bound  to  the  Canaanite  inhabitants  of  the  city.  Peculiar  al.so  is  the 
more  modern  Baal-ilarcod,  xoipavos  ku/^uv  (near  Bairut),  known  from  inscrip- 
tions (Wadd.  Nos.  1855,  1856  ;  Ganucau,  Bee.  d'Arch.  Or.  i.  95,  103).  The 
Semitic  form  is  supposed  to  be  *7p"lD  ?V2,  "lord  of  dancing,"  i.e.  he  to  whom 
dancing  is  due  as  an  act  of  homage  ;  cf.  for  the  construction,  Prov.  iii.  27. 
In  later  times  Baal  or  Bel  became  a  proper  name,  especially  in  connection 
with  the  cult  of  the  Babylonian  Bel,  and  entered  into  compounds  of  a  new  kind 


94  THE   BAAL  lect.  hi. 

As  the  heathen  gods  are  never  conceived  as  ubiquitous, 
and  can  act  only  where  they  or  their  ministers  are  present, 
the  sphere  of  their  permanent  authority  and  influence  is 
naturally  regarded  as  their  residence.  It  will  he  observed 
that  the  local  titles  which  I  have  cited  are  generally  derived 
either  from  towns  where  the  god  had  a  temple,  or  as  the 
Semites  say  a  house,  or  else  from  mountains,  which  are 
constantly  conceived  as  the  dwelling-places  of  deities.  The 
notion  of  personal  property  in  land  is  a  thing  that  grows 
up  gradually  in  human  society  and  is  first  applied  to  a 
man's  homestead.  Pasture  land  is  common  property,^  but 
a  man  acquires  rights  in  the  soil  by  building  a  house,  or  by 
"  quickening  "  a  waste  place,  i.e.  bringing  it  under  cultiva- 
tion. Originally,  that  is,  private  rights  over  land  are  a 
mere  consequence  of  rights  over  what  is  produced  by 
private  labour  upon  the  land.^  The  ideas  of  building  and 
cultivation  are  closely  connected — the  Arabic  'amara,  like 
the  German  hauen  covers  both — and  the  word  for  house  or 
homestead  is  extended  to  include  the  dependent  fields  or 
territory.  Thus  in  Syriac  "  the  house  of  Antioch  "  is  tlie 
territory  dependent  on  the  town,  and  in  the  Old  Testament 
the  land  of  Canaan  is  called  not  only  Jehovah's  land  but 
his  house.^     If  the  relation  of  the  Baal  to  his  district  is  to 

like  the  Aglibol  and  Malakhbel  of  Palmyra.  Baal  Sliamaim,  "the  lord  of 
heaven,"  belongs  to  the  class  of  titles  taken  from  the  region  of  nature  in 
which  the  god  dwells  or  has  sway.  NQID  ^J?2  (C.  /.  S.  No.  41)  and  rbv2 
rninn  {ibid.  No  177)  are  of  doubtful  interpretation.  On  the  wliole  there  is 
nothing  in  these  peculiar  forms  to  shake  the  general  conclusion  that  Baal  is 
primarily  the  title  of  a  god  as  inhabitant  or  owner  of  a  place. 

1  Common,  that  is,  to  a  tribe,  for  the  tribes  are  very  jealous  of  encroach- 
ments on  their  pastures.  But,  as  we  have  here  to  do  with  the  personal  rights 
of  the  Baal  within  his  own  community,  the  question  of  intertribal  rights  does 
not  come  in. 

3  The  law  of  Islam  is  that  land  which  has  never  been  cultivated  or 
occupied  by  houses  becomes  private  property  by  being  "quickened"  {bil- 
thy  a).  See  Nawawl,  Miiihdj,  ed.  Van  den  Berg,  ii.  171.  This  is  in  accord- 
ance with  pre-Islamic  custom.     Cf.  Wellhausen,  Heidenthum,  p.  105. 

3  Hos.  viii.  1,  ix.  15,  compared  with  ix.  3. 


LECT.  III.  AND    HIS    LAND.  95 

be  judged  on  these  analogies,  the  land  is  his,  Hist  because 
he  inliabits  it,  and  then  because  he  "  quickens "  it,  and 
makes  it  productive. 

That  this  is  the  true  account  of  the  relations  of  the  name 
Baal  appears  from  what  Hosea  tells  us  of  the  religious  con- 
ceptions of  his  idolatrous  contemporaries,  whose  nominal 
Jehovah  worship  was  merged  in  the  numerous  local  cults  of 
the  Canaanite  Baalim.  To  the  Baalim  they  ascribed  all  the 
natural  gifts  of  the  land,  the  corn  the  wine  and  the  oil,  the 
wool  and  the  flax,  the  vines  and  fig-trees,^  and  we  shall 
see  by  and  by  that  the  whole  ritual  of  feasts  and  sacrifices 
was  imbued  with  this  conception.  We  can  however  go  a 
step  further,  and  trace  the  idea  to  an  eailier  form,  by  the 
aid  of  a  fragment  of  old  heathen  phraseology  which  has 
survived  in  the  language  of  Hebrew  and  Arabic  agTiculture, 
I)Oth  in  the  Jevvisli  traditional  law  and  in  the  system  of 
]\Iohammedan  taxation  a  distinction  is  drawn  between  land 
which  is  artificially  irrigated  and  land  that  does  not  require 
irrigation.  The  latter  is  called  haal  (Ar.  Ictl),  an  abbre- 
viated expression,  for  which  the  Talmud  offers  the  fuller 
form  "  house  of  Baal "  or  "  field  of  the  house  of  Baal,"  and 
Arabic  documents  the  phrase  "  what  the  Ba'l  waters."  In 
Arabic  law  ground  of  the  second  class  pays  double  tithes. 
It  must  be  remembered  that  in  the  East  the  success  of 
agriculture  depends  more  on  the  supply  of  water  than  on 
anything  else,  and  the  "quickening  of  dead  ground"  {thyd 
al-mawdt),  which,  as  we  have  seen,  creates  ownership,  has 
reference  mainly  to  irrigation.^  Accordingly  what  the 
husbandman  irrigates  is  his  own  property,  but  what  is 
naturally  watered  he  regards  as  irrigated  by  a  god  and  as 
the  field  house  or  property  of  this  god,  who  is  thus  looked 
upon  as  the  Baal  or  owner  of  the  spot. 

'  Hos.  ii.  8  sqq. 

2  See,  for  example,  Abu  Yusuf  Ya'cub,  Kitdb  al-KharCij,  Cairo,  A.  II. 
1302,  p.  37. 


96  ORIGINAL   SENSE  lect.  hi. 

It  has  been  generally  assumed  that  Baal's  land,  in  the 
sense  in  which  it  is  opposed  to  irrigated  fields,  means  land 
watered  by  the  rains  of  heaven, "  the  waters  of  the  sky  "  as 
the  Arabs  call  them ;  and  when  the  Arabs  speak  at  one  time 
of  "  what  the  Ba'l  waters"  and  at  another  of  "  what  the  sky 
waters  "  it  is  natural  to  assume  that  the  two  phrases  mean 
the  same  thing,^  and  to  infer  that  the  Baal  is  the  sky  or 
the  god  of  the  sky  (Baal-shamairn)  who  plays  so  great 
a  part  in  later  Semitic  religion  and  is  identified  by  Philo 
Byblius  with  the  sun.  But,  strictly  regarded,  this  view, 
which  is  natural  in  our  climate,  appears  to  be  inconsistent 
with  the  conditions  of  vegetable  growth  in  the  Semitic 
lands,  where  the  rainfall  is  precarious  or  confined  to  certain 
seasons.  The  surface  moisture  from  the  "  water  of  heaven  " 
is  at  most  sufficient  to  raise  one  quick-growing  crop,  and 
the  face  of  the  earth  is  bare  and  lifeless  for  the  greater 
part  of  the  year,  save  where  there  is  irrigation  or  a  flow  of 
water  underground.  The  contrast  between  lands  fertilised 
by  rain  and  lands  that  need  irrigation  is  a  contrast  of 
climate,  whereas  the  peculiarity  of  Baal-land  is  one  of  soil 
or  bottom,  in  a  climate  where  most  ground  needs  irrigation. 
And  in  fact  the  best  Arab  authorities  expressly  say  that 
the  ha  I  is  not  fertilised  by  rain  but  by  subterranean 
waters.^ 

1  Sec  Wellhausen,  3foh.  in  Med.  p.  420  (where  however  irrigated  land  is 
contrasted  not  simjily  with  land  fed  by  rains  but  with  land  fed  by  rains  or 
flowing  water) ;  Heidanthum,  p.  170.  In  my  Prophets  of  hrael,  p.  172,  I 
have  fallen  into  the  same  trap,  which  indeed  was  set  by  the  less  accurate  of 
the  later  Arabic  authorities  :  see  the  next  note. 

2  gee  the  passages  collected  in  De  Goeje's  Glossary  to  Baladhori  and  in  the 
Limn  al-Arah.  When  the  Arabian  empire  extended  to  very  various 
climates  confusion  naturally  arose,  and  the  true  meaning  of  ftaVwas  disputed 
out  of  mere  ignorance  (see  al-Azhari's  criticism  of  al-Cotabi  in  the  Lisan),  or 
changed  to  suit  changed  conditions,  as  in  Spain  (De  Sacy's  Chrest.  Ar.  i. 
225).  The  true  Arabic  name  for  land  watered  by  rain  alone,  because  it  lies 
too  high  or  too  far  for  irrigation,  is  'idhy ;  such  soil  was  little  worth,  as 
appears  from  the  synonym  hakhn.  As  regiirds  the  Jewish  usage  (Mishnic 
^y3,  Sue.  iii.  3,    Terum.  x.   11,  Shehi.   ii,   9,  or  ^^3.1  mti*,  B.B.  iii.  1 ; 


LECT.   III. 


OF  baal's  land.  97 


Now,  if  the  Baal's  land  is  fertilised  l)y  ground-water,  all 
connection  between  the  deity  and  the  sky  falls  to  the 
ground ;  for  Semitic  antiquity  does  not  connect  springs 
rivers  and  subterranean  flow  with  rain,  but  regards  the 
primeval  store  of  water  as  divided  into  two  distinct  bodies, 
one  above  the  sky,  whence  rain  comes,  the  other  in  the 
great  deep,  which  feeds  springs  and  lakes  as  well  as  seas.^ 
And  so,  when  we  find  that  in  later  times  all  Semitic  deities 
were  usually  conceived  as  heavenly  or  astral,  we  must  con- 
clude that  the  connection  of  the  Baalim  with  imderground 
waters  dates  from  an  earlier  stage  of  religion,  and  that  the 
seat  of  the  gods  was  sought  by  springs  and  river  banks,  in 
the  groves  and  tangled  thickets  and  green  tree-shaded 
glades  of  mountain  hollows  and  deep  watercourses,  before 
all  deities  were  raised  to  heavenly  seats.  To  one  who  has 
wandered  in  the  Arabian  wilderness,  traversing  day  after 
day  stony  plateaus,  black  volcanic  fields,  or  arid  sands 
walled  in  by  hot  mountains  of  bare  rock,  and  relieved  by 

Talmudic  ^y^n  n*3)  the  best  discussion  is  that  of  Guisius  in  Snrenli.  i.  163. 
That  liere  also  tlie  moisture  is  subterranean  appears  from  Sac.  iii.  3  (for 
the  Pojmlus  Eiiphratica  reijuires  a  wet  bottom),  as  well  as  from  the  gloss  in 
Buxtorf  S.V.,  which  says  that  the  ba'l  lies  in  a  valley. 

The  Arabs  have  another  term,  'athar'i,  which  apparently  means  the  land  of 
'Athtar,  the  S.  Araliian  god  who  corresponds  in  name,  but  not  in  se.\,  to  the 
Babylonian  Ishtar  and  the  Phcenician  Astarte.  There  is  still  more  dispute 
about  this  word  than  about  the  other,  and,  though  it  is  often  identified  with 
ha'l,  there  is  somewhat  better  evidence  for  connecting  it  with  rainfall.  In  a 
word  that  seems  to  be  cf  Yemenite  origin  this  is  not  unnatural,  for  the 
monsoon  rains  are  of  great  importance  in  S.  Arabia,  and  in  Hadramaut 
not  only  cereal  crops  but  trees  are  dependent  on  them  (Maciizi,  Hadramaut, 
pp.  10,  2')).  But  even  in  Yemen  'Athtar  was  worshipped  as  a  god  of  wells 
(C.  /.  S.  pt.  iv.  No.  47,  cf.  Miillcr  in  ZDMQ.  xxxvii.  371),  and  in  North 
Arabia  'athnrl  seems  to  be  exactly  synonymous  with  ha'l,  for  the  oasis  near 
Kaf  in  "W.  Sirhan,  wliich  Guarmani  (p.  209)  calls  Etera,  and  Lady  Anne 
Blunt  {Nejd,  i.  89  877.)  writes  Itheri,  must  be  'Atharlwiih  a  thinning  of  the 
first  vowel  in  modern  pronunciation.  Ba'l  and  'atharl  designate  the  pro- 
duce as  well  as  the  land,  and  in  this  sense  the  reference  is  mainly  to  trees, 
particularly  to  the  date  palm  (for  which  in  most  parts  of  Arabia  iiTigation  or 
underground  water  is  a  necessity),  not  to  such  quick -growing  crops  as  are 
raised  on  thirsty  land  after  the  copious  rains  that  sometimes  fall. 

1  See  Gen,  i.  2,  vii.  11,  xlix,  25  ;  Deut.  xxxiii.  13,  etc. 

G 


98  THE    BAALIM    AS  lect.  hi. 

no  other  vegetation  than  a  few  grey  and  thorny  acacias  or 
scanty  tufts  of  parched  herbage ;  till  suddenly,  at  a  turn  of 
the  road,  he  emerges  on  a  Wady  where  the  ground-water 
rises  to  the  surface,  and  passes  as  if  hy  magic  into  a  new 
world,  where  the  ground  is  carpeted  with  verdure  and  a 
grove  of  stately  palm-trees  spreads  forth  its  canopy  of 
shade  against  the  hot  and  angry  heaven,  it  is  not  difficult 
to  realise  that  to  early  man  such  a  spot  was  verily  a  garden 
and  habitation  of  the  gods.  In  Syria  the  contrasts  are 
less  glaring  than  in  the  desert ;  but  only  in  the  spring 
time,  and  in  many  parts  of  the  country  not  even  then,  is 
the  general  fertility  such  that  a  fountain  or  a  marshy 
bottom  with  its  greensward  and  thicket  of  natural  wood 
can  fail  strongly  to  impress  the  imagination.  Nor  are  the 
religious  associations  of  such  a  scene  felt  only  by  heathen 
barbarians.  "  The  trees  of  the  Lord  drink  their  fill,  the 
cedars  of  Lebanon  wdiich  He  hath  planted :  Where  the  birds 
make  their  nests ;  as  for  the  stork,  the  fir-trees  are  her 
house  "  (Ps.  civ.  16).  This  might  pass  for  the  description  of 
the  natural  sanctuary  of  the  Baal  of  Lebanon,  but  who  does 
not  feel  its  solemn  grandeur  ?  Or  who  will  condemn  the 
touch  of  primitive  naturalism  that  colours  the  comparison 
in  the  first  Psalm  :  "  He  shall  be  like  a  tree  planted  by 
watercourses,  that  bringeth  forth  his  fruit  in  his  season  ; 
his  leaf  also  shall  not  wither,  and  whatsoever  he  doeth 
shall  prosper  "  (Ps.  i.  3)  1 

When  the  conception  of  Baal's  laud  is  thus  narrowed  to 
its  oldest  form,  and  limited  to  certain  favoured  spots  that 
seem  to  be  planted  and  watered  by  the  hand  of  the  gods,^ 
we  are  on  the  point  of  passing  from  the  idea  of  the  land  of 
the  god  to  that  of  his  homestead  and  sanctuary.  But 
before  we  take  this  step  it   will  be  convenient  for  us  to 

^  To  the  same  circle  of  ideas  belongs  the  conception  of  the  Garden  of  Eden, 
planted  by  God,  and  watered  not  by  rain  but  by  rivers. 


LECt.  III.  LORDS    OF    WATER.  99 

glance  rapidly  at  the  way  in  whicli  the  primitive  idea  was 
widened  and  extended.  In  Arabia  and  in  Palestine  also, 
as  we  see  from  the  account  of  Isaac's  dealings  with 
Abimelecli  in  Genesis  xxvi.,  property  in  water  is  more 
important  and  more  primitive  than  property  in  land. 
Without  access  to  water  the  land  is  useless,  and  so  in 
Arabia  the  right  of  a  tribe  or  a  family  to  certain  pasturages 
is  defined  by  the  ownership  of  certain  springs  wells  or 
watercourses.  So  too  in  the  agricultural  stage  of  society 
a  man  who  has  land  without  water  is  dependent  on  his 
neighbour  for  the  first  requisite  of  husbandry,  and  has 
to  procure  it  of  him  at  a  price.  If  therefore  the  local 
Baalim  hold  the  springs  and  watery  bottoms,  the  wliole 
agricultural  population  is  dependent  on  them,  and  must  pay 
them  tribute  for  the  right  of  irrigation.  Tlie  cjifts  of  first- 
fruits  and  the  like  that  form  the  main  part  of  Canaanite 
ritual  are  to  be  explained  on  this  principle,  for  they  are 
paid  not  only  by  Baal's  own  land  but  by  the  lands  of  all 
his  neighbours.  In  this  way  all  natural  growth  and  in- 
crease comes  to  be  looked  upon  as  the  gift  of  the  god,  wlio 
is  the  universal  author  of  productivity,  or  in  Semitic  phrase 
"  giver  of  life  to  the  dead  soil."  And  when  this  idea  is 
once  established  it  tends,  in  virtue  of  that  uncontrolled  use 
of  analogy  which  is  characteristic  of  early  thouglit,  to  gain 
wider  and  wider  applications. 

On  the  one  hand  the  fertilising  rains  of  heaven  are  in 
like  manner  conceived  as  the  gifts  of  a  power  seated  in  the 
sky,  and  various  imaginative  devices  are  called  in,  to  effect 
an  identification  between  the  god  above  who  sends  rain 
and  the  old  local  Baal  of  the  waters  of  the  land.  Tlie 
scientific  explanation,  that  the  lower  waters  come  ultimately 
from  the  rain,  is  not  that  which  recommends  itself  to  early 
thought.  On  the  contrary,  in  mountainous  regions,  where 
the  godhead  dwells  in  the  highest  glens  and  woody  crown 


100  THE   BAALIM   AS  lect.  hi. 

of  the  siiminits,  he  gathers  the  clouds  around  him  in  his 
earthly  sanctuary,  and  then  moves  forth  in  storm  and 
tempest  to  pour  their  waters  on  the  thirsty  land.  Or  in 
later  times,  when  the  deities  are  conceived  as  mainly 
astral,  a  star-goddess  is  identified  with  the  local  goddess 
of  a  fountain  by  aid  of  a  legend,  such  as  that  which  was 
related  at  Aphaca  in  the  Lebanon,  where  on  the  occasion 
of  the  annual  feast  a  ball  of  fire  was  "believed  to  fall  into 
the  sacred  stream/ 

On  the  other  hand  the  life-giving  power  of  the  god 
was  not  limited  to  vegetative  nature,  but  to  him  also  was 
ascribed  the  increase  of  animal  life,  the  multiplication  of 
flocks  and  herds,  and,  not  least,  of  the  human  inhabitants 
of  the  land.  For  the  increase  of  animate  nature  is 
obviously  conditioned,  in  the  last  resort,  by  the  fertility 
of  the  soil,  and  primitive  races,  which  have  not  learned 
to  differentiate  the  various  kinds  of  life  with  precision, 
think  of  animate  as  well  as  vegetable  life  as  rooted  in  the 
earth  and  sprung  from  it.  The  earth  is  the  great  mother 
of  all  things  in  most  mythological  philosophies,  and  the 
comparison  of  the  life  of  mankind,  or  of  a  stock  of  men, 
with  the  life  of  a  tree,  wliich  is  so  common  in  Semitic  as 
in  other  primitive  poetry,  is  not  in  its  origin  a  mere  figure. 
Thus  where  the  growth  of  vegetation  is  ascribed  to  a 
particular  divine  power,  the  same  power  receives  the 
thanks  and  homage  of  his  worshippers  for  the  increase 
of  cattle  and  of  men.  Firstlings  as  well  as  first-fruits 
were  offered  at  the  shrines  of  the  Baalim,  and  one  of  the 
commonest  classes  of  personal  names  given  by  parents  to  their 
sons  or  daughters  designates  the  child  as  the  gift  of  the  god.^ 

1  Sozomcn,  ii.  5  ;  ef.  the  fallen  star  which  Astarte  is  said  to  have  conse- 
crated at  the  holy  isle  of  Tyre  (Philo  Byblius  in  Fr.  Hist.  Gr.  iii.  569). 

-  To  this  class  belong  primarily  the  numerous  Hebrew  and  Phcenician 
names  compounded  with  forms  of  the  root  JDJ  or  }n\  "to  give"  (Heb. 
Jonathan,  Phcen.  Baaljathon  ;   Heb.   Mattaniah,  Phcen.  Jhitunibal  [masc. 


LECT.  III.  GIVERS    OF    FERTILITY.  101 

In  tliis  rapid  sketch  of  the  development  of  the  idea  of 
tlie  local  Baalim  I  have  left  many  tilings  to  be  confirmed 
or  filled  out  in  detail  by  subsequent  reference  to  the 
particulars  of  their  ritual,  and  I  abstain  altogether  from 
entering  at  this  stage  into  the  influence  which  the  con- 
ception of  (lie  Baalim  as  productive  and  reproductive 
powers  exercised  on  the  development  of  a  highly  sensual 
mythology,  especially  when  the  gods  were  divided  into 
sexes,  and  the  Baal  was  conceived  as  the  male  principle 
of  reproduction,  the  husband  of  the  land  which  he 
fertilised,^  for  this  belongs  rather  to  the  discussion  of  the 
nature  of  the  gods. 

You  will  observe  also  that  the  sequence  of  ideas  which 
I  have  proposed  is  applicable  in  its  entirety  only  to 
agricultural  populations,  such  as  those  of  Canaan  and 
Syria  on  the  one  hand  and  of  Yemen  on  the  other.     It  is 

and  fern.]  etc. ;  Nabatean,  Cosiiatlian  [Eiiting,  No.  12]) ;  and  Arabic  names 
formed  by  adding  the  god's  name  to  AValib,  Zaid  (perhaps  also  Aus),  "gift 
of."  Cognate  to  these  are  the  names  in  wliich  the  birtli  of  a  son  is  recog- 
nised as  a  ])roof  of  the  divine  favour  (Hel).  Hananiali,  Johanan  ;  Phcen. 
Hannibal,  No'ammilkat  [C.  /.  S.'No.  41],  etc.;  Edomitc,  Baal-Hanan  [Gen. 
xxxvi.  38];  Ar.  N«^^x^  [Wadd.  2113],  "favour  of  FA,"  Anf-el  "[good] 
augury  from  El,"  Ouec^hxo;  [^Viidd.  2372]  "  love  of  El"),  or  which  express 
the  idea  that  he  lias  helped  the  jiarcnts  or  heard  their  prayers  (Heb.  Azariah, 
Shemaiah ;  Phoen.  Asdrubal,  Eshmunazar,  etc.);  cf.  Gen.  xxix.,  xxx., 
1  Sam.  i.  Finally  there  is  a  long  series  of  names  such  as  Yehavbaal 
(C.  /.  S.  No.  69),  Kemoshyehi  (De  Yogiie,  MtlaiKjes,  p.  89),  "  ]5aal,  Chemosh 
gives  life."  The  great  variety  of  gods  referred  to  in  Phrenician  names  of 
these  forms  shows  that  the  gift  of  children  was  not  ascribed  to  any  one  god, 
but  to  all  Baalim,  each  in  his  own  sphere  ;  cf.  Hosea,  chap.  i. 

^  This  conception  appears  in  Hosea  and  underlies  the  figure  in  Isa.  Ixii.  4, 
where  married  land  (be'ulah)  is  contrasted  with  wilderness  ;  Wellhausen, 
Heidenthum,  p.  170.  It  is  a  conception  which  might  arise  naturally  enough 
from  the  ideas  above  developed,  but  was  no  doubt  favoured  by  tiie  use  of 
haal  to  mean  "husband."  How  haal  comes  to  mean  husband  is  not 
perfectly  clear ;  the  name  is  certainly  associated  with  monandry  and  the 
appropriation  of  the  wife  to  her  husband,  but  it  does  not  imply  a  servile 
relation,  for  the  slave-girl  does  not  call  her  master  ha'l.  Probably  the  key 
is  to  be  found  in  the  notion  that  the  wife  is  her  husband's  tillnge  (Coran 
ii.  223),  in  which  case  private  rights  ovir  land  were  older  than  exclusive 
marital  rights. 


102  BAAL   WORSHIP  lect.  iir. 

in  these  parts  of  the  Semitic  field  that  the  conception  of  the 
local  gods  as  Baalim  is  predominant,  though  traces  of  Ba'l  as 
a  divine  title  are  found  in  Central  Arabia  in  various  forms.^ 
In  the  central  parts  of  Arabia  agriculture  was  confined 
to  oases,  and  the  vocabulary  connected  with  it  is  mainly 
borrowed  from  the  northern  Semites.^  Many  centuries 
before  the  date  of  the  oldest  Arabic  literature,  when 
the  desert  was  the  great  highway  of  Eastern  commerce, 
colonies  of  the  settled  Semites,  Yemenites  and  Aramttans, 
occupied  the  oases  and  watering-places  in  the  desert  that 
were  suitable  for  commercial  stations,  and  to  these  immi- 
grants must  be  ascribed  the  introduction  of  agriculture 
and  even  of  the  date-palm  itself.  The  most  developed 
cults  of  Arabia  belong  not  to  the  pure  nomads,  but  to 
these  agricultural  and  trading  settlements,  which  the 
Bedouins  visited  only  as  pilgrims,  not  to  pay  stated 
homage  to  the  lord  of  the  land  from  whicli  they  drew 
their  life,  but  in  fulfilment  of  vows.  As  most  of  our 
knowledge  about  Arabian  cults  refers  to  pilgrimages  and 
the  visits  of  the  Bedouins,  the  impression  is  produced 
that  all  offerings  were  vows,  and  that  fixed  tribute  of  the 
fruits  of  the  earth,  such  as  was  paid  in  the  settled  lands 
to  local  Baalim,  was  unknown ;  but  this  impression  is  not 
accurate.  From  the  Goran  (vi.  137)  and  other  sources  we 
have  sufficient  evidence  that  the  settled  Arabs  paid  to  the 
god  a  regular  tribute  from  their  fields,  apparently  by 
marking  off'  as  his  a  certain  portion  of  tlie  irrigated  and 
cultivated  ground.^     Thus   as    regards   the   settled  Arabs 

1  For  the  evidence  see  Noldeke  in  ZDMG.  vol.  xl.  (1886)  p.  174 ;  and 
Wellhausen,  Heidtnthum,  p.  170. 

-  Frankel,  Aram.  Frennlww.  p.  125. 

^  All  the  evidence  on  this  point  has  been  confused  by  an  early  misunder- 
standing of  the  passage  in  the  Coran  :  "They  set  apart  for  Allah  a  portion 
of  the  tilth  or  the  cattle  he  has  created,  and  say.  This  is  Allah's — as  they 
fancy — and  this  belongs  to  our  partners  (idols) :  but  what  is  assigned  to 
idols  does  not  reach  Allah   and  what  is  assigned  to  Allah  really  goes  to 


LECT.  III.  IN   ARABIA.  10 


o 


the  parallelism  with  the  other  Semites  is  complete,  and 
the  only  question  is  whether  cults  of  the  Baal  type  and 
the  name  of  Baal  itself  were  not  borrowed,  along  with 
agriculture,  from  the  northern  Semitic  peoples. 

This  question  I  am  disposed  to  answer  in  the  affirmative  ; 
for  I  find  nothing  in  the  Arabic  use  of  the  word  ha'l  and 
its  derivatives  which  is  inconsistent  with  the  view  that 
they  had  their  origin  in  the  cultivated  oases,  and  nmch 
that  strongly  favours  such  a  view.  The  phrase  "  land 
which  the  Baal  waters  "  has  no  sense  till  it  is  opposed  to 
"  land  which  the  hand  of  man  waters,"  and  irrigation  is 
certainly  not  older  than  agriculture.  It  is  very  question- 
able whether  the  idea  of  the  godhead  as  the  permanent 
or  immanent  source  of  life  and  fertility — a  very  different 
tiling  from  the  belief  that  the  god  is  the  ancestor  of  his 
worshippers — had  any  place  in  the  old  tribal  religion  of 
the  nomadic  Arabs.  To  the  nomad,  who  does  not  practise 
irrigation,  the  source  of  life  and  fertility  is  the  rain  that 
quickens  the  desert  pastures,  and  there  is  no  evidence  that 
rain  was  ascribed  to  tribal  deities.  The  Arabs  regard  rain 
as  depending  on  the  constellations,  i.e.  on  the  seasons, 
which  affect  all  tribes  alike  within  a  wide  range ;  and  so 
when  the  showers  of  heaven  arc  ascribed  to  a  god,  that 

tlie  idols."  It  is  plain  that  the  heathen  said  indilFerently  "this  belongs  to 
Allah,"  meaning  the  local  god  (cf.  "Wellh.,  Heid.  p.  185),  or  this  belongs  to 
such  and  such  a  deity  (naming  liini),  and  Jlohamined  argues,  exactly  as 
Hosea  does  in  speaking  of  the  linmage  paid  by  his  contemporaries  to  local 
Baalim,  whom  they  identified  with  Jehovah,  that  whetlier  they  say 
"Allah"  or  "Hobal,"  the  real  object  of  their  homage  is  a  false  god.  But 
tlie  traditional  interpretation  of  the  text  is  that  one  jtavt  was  set  aside  for 
the  supreme  Allah  and  another  for  the  idols,  and  this  distortion  has 
coloured  all  accounts  of  what  the  Arabs  actually  did,  for  of  course  historical 
tradition  must  be  corrected  by  the  Goran.  Allowance  being  made  for  this 
error,  which  made  the  second  half  of  the  verse  say  that  Allah  was  habitually 
cheated  out  of  his  share  in  favour  of  the  idols,  the  notices  in  Ibn  Hisham, 
p.  53,  Sprenger,  Leh.  Moh.  iii.  458,  Pocock,  Specimen,  p.  112,  may  be 
accepted  as  based  upon  fact.  In  Pocock's  citation  from  the  Xa^m  aldorr 
it  appears  that  irrigated  land  is  referred  to. 


104  BAAL    WORSHIP 


LECT.   III. 


god  is  Allah,  the  supreme  and  non-tribal  deity.^  It  is  to 
be  noted  also  that  among  the  Arabs  the  theophorous 
proper  names  that  express  religious  ideas  most  akin  to 
those  of  the  settled  Semites  are  derived  from  deities 
whose  worship  was  widespread  and  not  confined  to  the 
nomads.  Further  it  will  appear  in  a  later  lecture  that 
the  fundamental  type  of  Arabian  sacrifice  does  not  take 
the  form  of  a  tribute  to  the  god  but  is  simply  an  act  of 
communion  with  him.  The  gift  of  firstlings  indeed,  which 
has  so  prominent  a  place  in  Canaanite  religion,  is  not 
unknown  in  Arabia.  But  this  aspect  of  sacrifice  has  very 
little  prominence ;  we  find  no  approach  to  the  payment 
of  stated  tribute  to  the  gods,  and  the  festal  sacrifices  at 
fixed  seasons,  which  are  characteristic  of  religions  that 
regard  the  gods  as  the  source  of  the  annual  renovation 
of  fertility  in  nature,  seem  to  have  been  confined  to  the 
great  sanctuaries  at  which  the  nomads  appeared  only  as 
pilgrims  before  a  foreign  god.^  In  these  pilgrimages  the 
nomadic  Arabs  might  learn  the  name  of  Baal,  but  they 
could  not  assimilate  the  conception  of  the  god  as  a  land- 
owner and  apply  it  to  their  own  tribal  deities,  for  the 
simple  reason  that  in  the  desert  private  property  in  land 
was  unknown  and  the  right  of  water  and  of  pasturage  was 
common  to  every  member  of  the  tribe.''     But  in  estimating 

1  Wellhausen,  IMd.  p.  175.  ^Cf.  Wellhausen,  p.  116. 

^  We  shall  see  in  the  next  lecture  that  the  institution  of  the  himd  or 
sacred  pasture-land  is  based  not  on  the  idea  of  property  but  on  a  principle  of 
taboo,  and  affords  no  argument  against  the  views  that  have  just  been 
developed.  A  main  argument  for  the  antiquity  of  Baal  religion  in  Arabia 
is  drawn  from  the  denominative  verb  ba'ila  =  cdiha,  which  means  "  to  be  in 
a  state  of  helpless  panic  and  perplexity,"  literally  "to  be  Baal-struck." 
But  such  results  are  more  naturally  to  be  ascribed  to  the  influence  of  an 
alien  god  than  of  a  trilial  divinity,  and  the  word  may  well  be  supposed  to 
have  primaiily  expressed  the  contusion  and  mazed  perplexity  of  the  nomad 
when  he  finds  himself  at  some  great  feast  at  a  pilgrim  shrine,  amidst  the 
strange  habits  and  worship  of  a  settled  population  ;  cf.  iEthiopic  ha'dl, 
"feast." 


LECT.  in. 


IX   ARABIA.  105 


the  influence  on  Arabian  religion  of  agriculture  and  the 
ideas  connected  with  settled  life,  we  must  remember  how 
completely,  in  the  centuries  before  Mohammed,  the  gods 
of  the  madar  ("glebe,"  i.e.  villagers  and  townsfolk)  had 
superseded  the  gods  of  the  wahar  ("  hair,"  i.e.  dwellers 
in  haircloth  tents).  Much  the  most  important  part  of 
the  religious  practices  of  the  nomads  consisted  in  pilgrim- 
ages to  the  great  shrines  of  the  town  Arabs,  and  even 
the  minor  sanctuaries,  which  were  frequented  only  Ijy 
particular  tribes,  seem  to  have  been  often  fixed  at  spots 
where  there  was  some  conmiencement  of  settled  life. 
Where  the  god  had  ii  house  or  temple  we  recognise  the 
work  of  men  who  were  no  longer  pure  nomads,  but  had 
begun  to  form  fixed  homes  ;  and  indeed  modern  observation 
shows  that,  when  an  Arab  tribe  begins  to  settle  down,  it 
acquires  the  elements  of  husbandry  before  it  gives  up  its 
tents  and  learns  to  erect  immoveable  houses.  Again  there 
were  sanctuaries  without  temples,  but  even  at  these  the 
god  had  his  treasure  in  a  cave,  and  a  priest  wdio  took  care 
of  his  possessions,  and  there  is  no  reason  to  think  that  the 
priest  was  an  isolated  hermit.  The  presumption  is  that 
almost  every  holy  place  at  the  time  of  Mohammed  was  a 
little  centre  of  settled  agricultural  life,  and  so  also  a  centre 
of  ideas  foreign  to  the  purely  nomadic  worshippers  that 
frequented  it.^ 

^  In  Arabia  one  section  of  a  tribe  is  often  nomadic  while  another  is 
agricultural,  but  in  spite  of  their  kinship  the  two  sections  feel  themselves 
very  far  apart  in  life  and  ways  of  thought,  and  a  nomad  girl  often  refuses 
to  stay  with  a  village  husl)aiid.  In  this  connection  the  traditions  of  the 
foreign  origin  of  the  cult  at  Mecca  deserve  more  attention  than  is  generally 
paid  to  them,  though  not  in  the  line  of  Dozy's  speculations.  To  the  tribes 
of  the  desert  the  religion  of  the  towns  was  foreign  in  spirit  and  contrasted 
ill  many  ways  with  their  old  nomadic  habits ;  moreover,  as  we  have  seen, 
it  was  probably  coloured  from  the  first  by  Syrian  and  Nabata-an  influences. 
Yet  it  exercised  a  griat  attraction,  mainly  by  appealing  to  the  sensual  part 
of  the  Bedouin's  nature  ;  the  feasts  were  connected  with  the  markets,  and 
at  them  there  was  much  jollity  and  good  cheer.     They  began  to  be  looked 


106  THE   HOMES   OR   HAUNTS  lect.  hi. 

The  final  result  of  this  long  discussion  is  that  the 
conception  of  the  local  god  as  Baal  or  lord  of  the  land, 
the  source  of  its  fertility  and  the  giver  of  all  the  good 
things  of  life  enjoyed  by  its  inliahitants,  is  intimately 
bound  up  with  the  growth  of  agricultural  society,  and 
involves  a  series  of  ideas  unknown  to  the  primitive  life 
of  the  savage  huntsman  or  the  pure  pastoral  nomad.  But 
we  have  also  seen  that  the  original  idea  of  Baal's  land  was 
limited  to  certain  favoured  spots  that  seem  to  be  planted 
and  watered  by  the  hand  of  the  god  and  to  form,  as  it 
were,  his  homestead.  Thus  in  its  beginnings  the  idea  of 
the  land  of  the  god  appears  to  be  only  a  development,  in 
accordance  with  the  type  of  agricultural  life,  of  the  more 
primitive  idea  that  the  god  has  a  special  home  or  haunt 
on  earth.  Agricultural  habits  teach  men  to  look  on  this 
home  as  a  garden  of  God,  cultivated  and  fertilised  by  the 
hand  of  deity,  but  it  was  not  agriculture  that  created  the 
conception  that  certain  places  were  the  special  haunts  of 
superhuman  powers.  That  the  gods  are  not  ubiquitous 
but  subject  to  limitations  of  time  and  space,  and  that  they 
can  act  only  where  they  or  their  messengers  are  present, 
is  the  universal  idea  of  antiquity  and  needs  no  explanation. 
In  no  region  of  thought  do  men  begin  with  transcendental 
ideas  and  conceive  of  existences  raised  above  space  and 
time.  Thus  whatever  the  nature  of  the  gods,  they  were 
doubtless  conceived  from  the  first  as  having  their  proper 
homes  or  haunts,  which  they  went  forth  from  and  returned 
to,  and  v/liere  they  were  to  be  found  by  the  worshippers 
with  whom  they  had  fixed  relations.  We  are  not  entitled 
to  say  ^  priori  that  this  home  would  necessarily  be  a  spot 
on  the  surface  of  tlie  earth,  for,  just  as  there  are  fowls  of 

on  as  making  up  the  sum  of  religion,  and  the  cult  of  the  gods  came  to  be 
almost  entirely  dissociated  from  daily  life,  and  from  the  customs  associated 
with  the  sanctity  of  kinship,  which  at  one  time  made  up  the  chief  jiart  of 
nomad  religion.     Cf.  Wellh.,  Ileid.,  p.  182. 


LECT.  HI.  OF   THE   GODS.  107 

the  heaven  and  fish  of  the  sea  as  well  as  beasts  of  the 
field,  tlierc  might  be,  and  in  fact  were,  celestial  gods  and 
gods  of  the  waters  nnder  the  earth  as  well  as  gods 
terrestrial.  In  later  times  celestial  gods  predominate,  as 
we  see  from  the  prevalence  of  sacrifice  by  fire,  in  which 
the  homage  of  the  worshipper  is  directed  upwards  in  the 
pillar  of  savoury  smoke  that  rises  from  the  altar  towards 
the  seat  of  the  godhead  in  the  sky.  But  all  sacrifices  are 
not  made  by  fire.  The  Greeks,  especially  in  older  times, 
buried  the  sacrifices  devoted  to  gods  of  the  underworld 
and  threw  into  the  water  gifts  destined  for  the  gods  of 
seas  and  rivers.  Doth  these  forms  of  fireless  ritual  are 
found  also  among  the  Semites ;  and  indeed  among  the 
Arabs  sacrifices  by  fire  were  almost  unknown,  and  the  gift 
of  the  worshipper  was  conveyed  to  the  deity  simply  by 
being  laid  on  sacred  ground,  hung  on  a  sacred  tree,  or  in 
the  case  of  liquid  offerings  and  sacrificial  blood,  poured  over 
a  sacred  stone.  In  such  cases  w'e  have  the  idea  of  locality 
connected  with  the  godhead  in  the  simplest  form.  There 
is  a  fixed  place  on  the  earth's  surface,  marked  by  a  sacred 
tree  or  a  sacred  stone,  where  the  god  is  wont  to  be  found, 
and  offerings  deposited  there  have  reached  their  address. 

In  later  times  the  home  or  sanctuary  of  a  god  was  a 
temple,  or  as  the  Semites  call  it  a  "  house  "  or  "  palace." 
But  as  a  rule  the  sanctuary  is  older  than  the  house,  and 
the  god  did  not  take  up  his  residence  in  a  place  because  a 
house  liad  been  provided  for  him,  but  on  the  contrary, 
when  men  had  learned  to  build  houses  for  themselves,  they 
also  set  up  a  house  for  their  god  in  the  place  which  was 
already  known  as  his  home.  Of  course,  as  population  in- 
creased and  temples  were  multiplied,  means  were  found  to 
evade  this  rule,  and  new  sanctuaries  were  constituted  in 
the  places  most  convenient  for  the  worshippers ;  but  even 
in  such  cases  forms  were  observed  which  implied  that  a 


108  THE   HOMES   OR   HAUNTS  lect.  hi. 

temple  could  not  fitly  be  erected  except  in  a  place  which 
was  affected  by  the  deity,  No  mere  act  of  man,  no  choice 
on  his  part,  could  constitute  a  sanctuary ;  it  was  necessary 
that  the  god  should  choose  the  place,  and  the  greatest  and 
holiest  sanctuaries  were  those  which,  according  to  un- 
disputed tradition,  he  had  been  known  to  frequent  from 
time  immemorial. 

That  the  gods  haunted  certain  spots,  which  in  conse- 
quence of  this  were  holy  places  and  fit  places  of  worship, 
was  to  the  ancients  not  a  theory  but  a  matter  of  fact, 
handed  down  by  tradition  from  one  generation  to  another, 
and  accepted  with  unquestioning  faith.  The  reason  for 
frequenting  a  sanctuary  was  that  it  had  been  frequented 
in  the  past,  the  proof  that  the  god  was  to  be  found  at  a 
certain  spot  was  that  by  long  custom  he  had  been  sought 
there,  and  had  shewn  himself  to  his  worshippers.  Accord- 
ingly we  find  that  new  sanctuaries  can  be  formed  and  new 
altars  or  temples  erected,  wherever  the  godhead  has  given 
unmistakeable  evidence  of  his  presence.  All  that  is 
necessary  to  constitute  a  Semitic  sanctuary  is  a  precedent ; 
it  is  assumed  that  where  the  god  has  once  manifested  him- 
self and  shewn  favour  to  his  worshippers  he  will  do  so 
again,  and  when  the  precedent  has  been  strengthened  by 
frequent  repetition  the  holiness  of  the  place  is  fully 
secured.  Thus  in  the  earlier  parts  of  the  Old  Testament 
a  theophany  is  always  taken  to  be  a  good  reason  for 
sacrificing  on  the  spot.  The  deity  has  manifested  himself 
either  visibly  or  by  some  mighty  deed,  and  therefore  an  act 
of  worship  cannot  be  out  of  place.  Saul  builds  an  altar 
on  the  site  of  his  victory  over  the  Philistines,^  the  patri- 
archs found  sanctuaries  on  the  spot  wdiere  the  deity  has 
appeared  to  them,^  Gideon  and  Manoah  present  an  offering 

^  1  Sam.  xiv.  35. 

2  Gen.  xii.  7,  xxii.  14,  x.^viii.  18  sqq.  ;  cf.  Exod.  xvii.  15. 


LECT.  III.  OF   THE   GODS.  100 

where  they  have  received  a  divine  message.^  P2ven  in  the 
Hebrew  religion  God  is  not  equally  near  at  all  places  and 
all  times,  and  when  a  man  is  brought  face  to  face  with 
Him  he  seizes  the  opportunity  for  an  act  (»f  ritual  homage. 
But  the  ordinary  practices  of  religion  are  not  dependent  on 
extraordinary  manifestations  of  the  divine  presence  ;  they 
proceed  on  the  assumption  that  there  are  fixed  places 
where  man  can  meet  with  god,  and  that  where  the  deity 
has  appeared  once  he  may  be  expected  to  appear  again. 
When  Jacob  has  his  dream  of  a  divine  apparition  at 
Bethel,  he  concludes  not  merely  that  Jehovah  is  present 
there  at  the  moment,  but  that  the  place  is  "  the  house  of 
God,  the  gate  of  heaven."  And  accordingly  Bethel  con- 
tinued to  be  regarded  as  a  sanctuary  of  the  first  class  down 
to  the  captivity.  In  like  manner  all  the  places  where  the 
patriarchs  were  recorded  to  have  worshipped  or  where  God 
appeared  to  them,  figure  as  traditional  holy  places  in  tlie 
later  history,  and  at  least  one  of  them,  that  of  Mamre,  was 
a  notable  sanctuary  down  to  Christian  times.  We  are 
entitled  to  use  these  facts  as  illustrative  of  Semitic  religion 
in  general,  and  not  of  the  distinctive  features  of  the 
spiritual  religion  of  the  Old  Testament ;  for  the  worship  of 
Bethel,  Shechem,  Beersheba,  and  the  other  patriarchal  holy 
places,  was  mingled  with  Canaanite  elements  and  is  re- 
garded as  idolatrous  by  the  prophets ;  and  the  later  ritual 
at  Mamre,  which  was  put  down  by  the  Christian  emperors, 
was  purely  heathenish."  The  conception,  therefore,  that 
where  the  deity  has  once  appeared  in  ancient  times  he  is 
still  to  be  found  by  his  worshippers,  is  not  specific  to  the 
Old  Testament  religion  but  is  a  common  feature  of  Semitic 
faith.  It  belongs  in  fact  to  the  general  principle  that  all 
ancient  religion  is  ruled  by  precedent. 

1  .Tiulges  vi.  20,  xiii.  19. 

-  The  evidence  is  collected  by  Relaud,  Palaslina,  p.  711  sqq. 


110  HOLY   PLACES   IN  lect.  hi. 

This  law  of  precedent  as  forming  a  safe  rule  for  ritual 
institutions    is,    I    say,    common    to    the    Old    Testament 
religion  and  to  the  surroundincj  heathenism ;  the  difference 
lies   in  the  interpretation   put   on   it.      And  even  in  this 
respect  all  parts  of  the  Old  Testament  are  not  on  the  same 
level.      By  a  prophet  like  Isaiah  the  residence  of  Jehovah 
in  Zion  is  almost  wholly  dematerialised.      Isaiah  has  not 
risen  to  the  full  height  of  the  New  Testament  conception 
that  God,  who  is  spirit  and  is  to  be  worshipped  spiritually, 
makes  no  distinction  of  spot  with  regard  to  His  worship, 
and  is  equally  near  to  receive  men's  prayers  in  every  place ; 
but  he  falls  short  of  this  view,  not  out  of  regard  for  ritual 
tradition,  but  because,  conceiving  Jehovah  as  the  king  of 
Israel,   the    supreme   director    of    its    national    polity,   he 
necessarily  conceives   His    kingly  activity   as    going   forth 
from  the  capital  of  the  nation.      But  the  ordinary  concep- 
tion of  the  Old  Testament,  in  the  historical  books  and  in 
the  Law,  is  not  so  subtle  as  this.     Jehovah  is  not  tied  to 
one  place  more  than  another,  but  He  is  not  to  be  found 
except  in  the  places  where  "  He  has  set  a  memorial  of  His 
name,"   and  in  these  He  "  comes  to  His  worshippers  and 
blesses  them"  (Exod.  xx.  24).     Even  this  view  rises  above 
the   current   ideas   of   the  older  Hebrews  in  so  far  as  it 
represents   the   establishment   of    fixed   sanctuaries   as   an 
accommodation  to  the  necessities  of  man.      It  is  obvious 
that  in  the  history  of  Jacob's  vision  the  idea  is  not  that 
Jehovah  came  to  Jacob,  but  that  Jacob  was  unconsciously 
guided  to  the  place  where  there  already  was  a  ladder  set 
between  earth  and  heaven,  and  where  therefore  the  god- 
head was  peculiarly  accessible.      Precisely  similar  to  this 
is   the   old   Hebrew  conception   of   Sinai   or   Horeb,  "  the 
Mount  of  God."     It  is  clear  that  in  Exod.  iii.  the  ground 
about  the  burning  bush  does  not  become  holy  because  God 
has  appeared  to  Moses.     On  the  contrary  the  theophany 


LECT.  III.  THE    OLD    TESTAMENT.  Ill 

takes  place  there  because  it  is  holy  ground,  Jehovah's 
liabitual  dweUing-phace.  In  Exod.  xix.  4,  when  Jehovah 
at  Sinai  says  that  He  has  brought  the  Israelites  unto  Him- 
self, the  meaning  is  that  He  has  brought  them  to  the  Mount 
of  God ;  and  long  after  the  establishment  of  the  Hebrews 
in  Canaan,  poets  and  prophets  describe  Jehovali,  when  He 
comes  to  help  His  people,  as  marching  from  Sinai  in 
thundercloud  and  storm/ 

This  point  of  view,  which  in  the  Old  Testament  appears 
only  as  an  occasional  survival  of  primitive  thought,  corre- 
sponds to  the  ordinary  ideas  of  Semitic  heathenism.  The 
local  relations  of  the  gods  are  natural  relations ;  holy 
ground  is  not  consecrated  by  or  for  man's  worship,  but  men 
worship  at  a  particular  spot  because  it  is  the  natural  home 
or  haunt  of  the  god.  Holy  places  in  this  sense  are  older 
than  temples,  and  even  older  than  the  beginnings  of  settled 
life.  The  nomad  shepherd  or  the  savage  hunter  has  no 
fixed  home,  and  cannot  think  of  his  god  as  having  one,  but 
he  has  a  district  or  beat  to  which  his  wanderings  are 
usually  confined,  and  within  it  again  he  has  his  favourite 
lairs  or  camping-places.  And  on  this  analogy  he  can 
imagine  for  himself  tracts  of  sacred  ground,  habitually 
frequented  by  the  gods,  and  special  points  within  these 
tracts  which  the  deity  particularly  affects.  By  and  by, 
under  the  influence  of  agriculture  and  settled  life,  the 
sacred  tract  becomes  the  estate  of  the  god,  and  the  special 
sacred  points  within  it  become  his  temples ;  but  originally 
the  former  is  only  a  mountain  or  glade  in  the  unenclosed 
wilderness,  and  the  latter  are  merely  spots  in  the  desert 

1  Deut.  xxxiii.  2  ;  Judges  v.  4  sqq.  ;  Habak.  iii.  3.  That  the  sanctity  of 
Sinai  is  derived  from  tiie  law-giviny  tliere  is  not  tiie  primitive  idea.  This 
appears  most  clearly  from  the  critical  analysis  of  the  Tentateuch,  but  is 
sulKciently  evident  from  tlie  facts  cited  above  ;  indeed  the  whole  narrative  of 
the  law-giving  implies  a  prior  sanctity  of  Mount  Sinai,  else  why  should  the 
Israelites  have  been  led  out  of  their  way  to  receive  the  law  there  rather  than 
at  any  other  place  ? 


112  THE    GODS    AND  LECT.  III. 

defined    by   some    natural    landmark,    a    cave,   a    rock,   a 
fountain  or  a  tree. 

"We  have  seen  that,  when  a  sanctuary  was  once  con- 
stituted, the  mere  force  of  tradition  and  precedent,  the 
continuous  custom  of  worshipping  at  it,  were  sufficient 
to  maintain  its  character.  At  the  more  developed 
sanctuaries  the  temple,  the  image  of  the  god,  the 
whole  apparatus  of  ritual,  the  miraculous  legends  re- 
counted by  the  priests,  and  the  marvels  that  were 
actually  displayed  before  the  eyes  of  the  worshippers, 
were  to  an  uncritical  age  sufficient  confirmation  of  the 
belief  that  the  place  was  indeed  a  house  of  God.  But 
in  the  most  primitive  sanctuaries  there  were  no  such 
artificial  aids  to  faith,  and  it  is  not  so  easy  to  realise 
the  process  by  which  the  traditional  belief  that  a  spot 
in  the  wilderness  was  the  sacred  ground  of  a  particular 
deity  became  firmly  established.  Ultimately,  as  we  have 
seen,  the  proof  that  the  deity  frequents  a  particular  place 
lies  in  the  fact  that  he  manifests  himself  there,  and  the 
proof  is  cumulative  in  proportion  to  the  frequency  of  the 
manifestations.  The  difficulty  about  this  line  of  proof 
is  not  that  wdiich  naturally  suggests  itself  to  our  minds. 
"We  find  it  hard  to  think  of  a  visible  manifestation  of  the 
godhead  as  an  actual  occurrence,  but  all  primitive  peoples 
believe  in  frequent  theophanies,  or  at  least  in  frequent 
occasions  of  personal  contact  between  men  and  super- 
human powers.  "When  all  nature  is  mysterious  and  full 
of  unknown  activities,  any  natural  object  or  occurrence 
which  appeals  strongly  to  the  imagination,  or  excites 
sentiments  of  awe  and  reverence,  is  readily  taken  for  a 
manifestation  of  divine  or  demoniac  life.  But  a  super- 
natural being  as  such  is  not  a  god,  he  becomes  a  god  only 
when  he  enters  into  stated  relations  with  man,  or  rather 
with  a  community  of  men.     In  the  belief  of  the  heathen 


LECT.    III. 


THE  JINN".  113 


Arabs,  for  example,  nature  is  full  of  living  beings  of 
superhuman  kind,  the  Jinn  or  dsemons.^  These  jinn 
are  not  pure  spirits  but  corporeal  beings,  more  like  beasts 
than  men,  for  they  are  ordinarily  represented  as  hairy, 
but  differing  from  ordinary  beasts  by  their  power  of 
assuming  various  shapes,  like  the  were-wolvcs  to  whom 
allusion  has  already  been  made.  Like  the  wild  beasts 
they  have,  for  the  most  part,  no  friendly  or  stated 
relations  with  men,  but  are  outside  the  pale  of  man's 
society,  and  frequent  savage  and  deserted  places  far  from 
the  wonted  tread  of  men.^  It  appears  from  several 
poetical  passages  of  the  Old  Testament  that  the  northern 
Semites  believed  in  demons  of  a  precisely  similar  kind, 
hairy  beings  {ss'lrim),  nocturnal  monsters  (lllith),  which 
haunted  waste  and  desolate  places,  in  fellowship  with 
jackals  and  ostriches  and  other  animals  that  shun  the 
abodes  of  man.^ 

In  Islam  the  gods  of  heathenism  are  degraded  into 
jinn,  just  as  the  gods  of  north  Semitic  heathenism  are 
called  sS'lrlm^  in  Lev.  xvii.  7,  or  as  the  gods  of  Greece 
and  Rome  became  devils  to  the  early  Christians.  In  all 
these  cases  the  adherents  of  a  higher  faith  were  not 
prepared  to  deny  that  the  heathen  gods  really  existed,  and 
did  the  things  recorded  of  them  ;  the  difference  between 

^  For  details  as  to  ilxc  jinn  in  ancient  times  see  Wellhausen,  Heidentlnim, 
p.  135  sqq.  The  later  form  of  the  belief  in  such  beings,  much  modified  by- 
Islam,  is  illustrated  by  Lane  in  Note  21  of  the  Introduction  to  liis  version 
of  the  AraJnan  Nvjhts.  In  the  old  translation  of  the  Arabian  Nights  they 
are  called  Genii. 

-  Certain  kinds  of  thera  however  frequent  trees  and  even  human 
habitations,  and  these  were  identified  with  the  serpents  which  appear 
and  disappear  so  mysteriously  about  walls  and  the  roots  of  trees.  See 
Noldeke,  Ztschr.  f.  VUlkerpsyck.  1860,  p.  A12  sqq.  ;  Wellh.  ut  mp.  p.  137. 
For  the  snake  as  the  form  of  ihcjinn  of  trees,  see  Rasmussen,  Addil.  p.  71, 

compared  with  Jauliari  and  the  Limn,  s.  rad.  L.^.^-. 

3  Isa.  xiii.  21,  xxxiv.  14  ;  cf.  Luke  xi.  24. 

*  "Hairy  demons,"  E.V.  "devils,"  but  in  Isa.  xiii.  21  "satyrs." 

II 


114  THE   GODS   AND  LECT.  hi. 

gods  and  demons  lies  not  in  their  nature  and  power — 
for  the  heathen  themselves  did  not  rate  the  power  of 
their  gods  at  omnipotence  —  but  in  their  relations  to 
man.  The  jinn  are  gods  without  worshippers,  and  a 
god  who  loses  his  worshippers  goes  back  to  the  class 
from  which  he  came,  as  a  being  of  vague  and  inde- 
terminate powers  who,  having  no  personal  relations  to  men, 
is  on  the  whole  to  be  regarded  as  an  enemy.  The  demons, 
like  the  gods,  have  their  particular  haunts  which  are 
regarded  as  awful  and  dangerous  places.  But  the  haunt 
of  the  jinn  differs  from  a  sanctuary  as  the  jinn  themselves 
differ  from  gods.  The  one  is  feared  and  avoided,  the 
other  is  approached,  not  indeed  without  awe,  but  yet  with 
hopeful  confidence;  for  though  there  is  no  essential  physical 
distinction  between  demons  and  gods,  there  is  the  funda- 
mental moral  difference  that  the  jinn  are  strangers  and 
so,  by  the  law  of  the  desert,  enemies,  while  the  god,  to 
the  worshippers  who  frequent  his  sanctuary,  is  a  known 
and  friendly  power.  In  fact  the  earth  may  be  said  to  be 
parcelled  out  between  demons  and  wild  beasts  on  the  one 
hand,  and  gods  and  men  on  the  other.  To  the  former 
belong  the  untrodden  wilderness  with  all  its  unknown 
perils,  the  wastes  and  jungles  that  lie  outside  the  familiar 
tracks  and  pasture  grounds  of  the  tribe,  and  which  only 
the  boldest  men  venture  upon  without  terror ;  to  the 
latter  belong  the  regions  that  man  knows  and  habitually 
frequents,  and  within  which  he  has  established  relations, 
not  only  with  his  human  neighbours,  but  with  the  super- 
natural beings  that  have  their  haunts  side  by  side  with 
him.  And  as  man  gradually  encroaches  on  the  wilderness 
and  drives  back  the  wild  beasts  before  him,  so  the  gods  in 
like  manner  drive  out  the  demons,  and  spots  that  were 
once  feared,  as  the  habitation  of  mysterious  and  pre- 
sumably malignant  powers,   lose   their   terrors  and  either 


LECT.  III.  THE    JIXX.  1  1  5 


become  common  ground  or  are  transformed  into  the  seats 
of  friendly  deities.  From  tliis  point  of  view  the  recogni- 
tion of  certain  spots  as  haunts  of  the  gods  is  the  religious 
expression  of  the  gradual  subjugation  of  nature  by  man. 
In  conquering  tlie  earth  for  liimself  primitive  man  has 
to  contend  not  only  with  material  difficulties  but  with 
superstitious  terror  of  the  unknown,  paralysing  his  energies 
and  forbidding  him  freely  to  put  forth  his  strength  to 
subdue  natfire  to  his  use.  Where  the  unknown  demons 
reign  he  is  afraid  to  set  his  foot  and  make  the  good  things 
of  nature  his  own,  But  where  the  god  has  his  haunt  he 
is  on  friendly  soil,  and  has  a  protector  near  at  hand ;  the 
mysterious  powers  of  nature  are  his  allies  instead  of  his 
enemies,  "  he  is  in  league  with  the  stones  of  the  field  and 
the  wild  beasts  of  the  field  are  at  peace  with  him."  ^ 

The  triumph  of  the  gods  over  the  demons,  like  the 
triumph  of  man  over  wild  beasts,  nmst  have  been  effected 
very  gradually,  and  may  be  regarded  as  finally  sealed  and 
secured  only  in  the  agricultural  stage,  when  the  god  of  the 
community  became  also  the  supreme  lord  of  the  land  and 
the  author  of  all  the  good  things  therein.  When  this 
stage  was  reached  the  demons  —  or  supernatural  beings 
that  have  no  stated  relations  to  their  human  neighbours — 
were  either  driven  out  into  waste  and  untrodden  places, 
or  were  reduced  to  insignificance  as  merely  subordinate 
beings,  of  which  private  superstition  might  take  account, 
but  with  which  pulilic  religion  had  nothing  to  do. 
Within  the  region  fre(|uented  by  a  community  of  men 
the  god  of  the  community  was  supreme ;  every  i)heno- 
menon  that  seemed  supernatural  was  ordinarily  referred  to 
his  initiative  and  regarded  as  a  token  of  his  personal 
presence,  or  of  the  presence  of  his  messengers  and  agents ; 

'  Job  V.  23.     The  allusion  to  the  wild  beasts  is  characteristic  ;  of.  Hos.  ii. 
20(18);  2  Kings  xvii.  26. 


116  THE    GODS    AND 


LECT.    III. 


and  in  consequence  every  place  that  had  special  super- 
natural associations  was  regarded,  not  as  a  haunt  of 
unknown  demons,  but  as  a  holy  place  of  the  known  god. 
This  is  the  point  of  view  which  prevailed  among  the 
ancient  Hebrews,  and  undoubtedly  prevailed  also  among 
their  Canaanite  neighbours.  Up  to  a  certain  point  the 
process  involved  in  all  this  is  not  difficult  to  follow.  That 
the  powers  that  haunt  a  district  in  which  men  live  and 
prosper  must  be  friendly  powers  is  an  obvious  conclusion. 
But  it  is  not  so  easy  to  see  how  the  vague  idea  of  super- 
natural but  friendly  neighbours  passes  into  the  precise 
conception  of  a  definite  local  god,  or  how  the  local  power 
comes  to  be  confidently  identified  with  the  tribal  god  of 
the  community.  The  tribal  god,  as  we  have  seen,  has  very 
definite  and  permanent  relations  to  his  worshippers,  of  a 
kind  quite  different  from  the  local  relations  which  we 
have  just  been  speaking  of;  he  is  not  merely  their 
friendly  neighbour,  but  (at  least  in  most  cases)  their 
kinsman  and  the  parent  of  their  race.  How  does  it  come 
about  that  the  parent  of  a  race  of  men  is  identified  with 
the  superhuman  being  that  haunts  a  certain  spot,  and 
manifests  himself  there  by  visible  apparitions,  or  other 
evidence  of  his  presence  satisfactory  to  the  untutored 
mind  ?  The  importance  of  such  an  identification  is 
enormous,  for  it  makes  a  durable  alliance  between  man 
and  certain  parts  of  nature  which  are  not  subject  to  his 
will  and  control;  and  so  permanently  raises  his  position  in 
the  scale  of  the  universe,  setting  him  free,  within  a  certain 
range,  from  the  crushing  sense  of  constant  insecurity  and 
vague  dread  of  the  unknown  powers  that  close  him  in  on 
every  side.  So  great  a  step  in  the  emancipation  of  man 
from  bondage  to  his  natural  surroundings  cannot  have 
been  easily  made,  and  is  not  to  be  explained  by  any  slight 
in  'priori  method.     The  problem  is  not  one  to  be  solved  off- 


LECT.    III. 


THK   JINN.  117 


hand,  but  to  be  carefully  kept  in  mind  as  we  continue  our 
studies,  and  broaden  our  views  of  ancient  religion  and  of 
the  primitive  processes  of  thought  on  which  its  develop- 
ment rests. 

There  is  one  thing  however  in  connection  with  this 
problem  which  it  may  be  well  to  note  at  once.  We  have 
seen  that  through  the  local  god,  who  on  the  one  hand  has 
fixed  relations  to  a  race  of  men,  and  on  the  other  hand 
has  fixed  relations  to  a  definite  sphere  of  nature,  the 
worshipper  is  brought  into  stated  and  permanent  alliance 
with  certain  parts  of  his  material  environment  which  are 
not  subject  to  his  will  and  control.  But  within  somewhat 
narrow  limits  exactly  the  same  thing  is  effected,  in  the 
very  earliest  stage  of  savage  society,  and  in  a  way  that 
does  not  involve  any  belief  in  an  individual  stock-god, 
through  the  institution  of  totemism.  In  the  totem  stage 
of  society  each  kinship  or  stock  of  savages  believes  itself 
to  be  physically  akin  to  some  natural  kind  of  animate  or 
inanimate  things,  most  generally  to  some  kind  of  animal. 
Every  animal  of  this  kind  is  looked  upon  as  a  brother,  is 
treated  with  the  same  respect  as  a  human  clansman,  and 
is  believed  to  aid  his  human  relations  by  a  variety  of 
friendly  services.^  The  importance  of  such  a  permanent 
alliance,  based  on  the  indissoluble  bond  of  kinship,  witli 
a  whole  group  of  natural  beings  lying  outside  the  sphere 
of  humanity,  is  not  to  be  measured  by  our  knowledge  of 
what  animals  can  and  cannot  do.  For  as  their  nature  is 
imperfectly  known,  savage  imagination  clothes  them  with 
all  sort  of  marvellous  attributes ;  it  is  seen  that  their 
powers  differ  from  those  of  man  and  it  is  supposed  that 
they  can  do  many  things  that  are  beyond  his  scope.     In 

1  See  J.  G.  Frazer,  Totemism  (Edinburgh  :  A.  &  C.  Blark,  1887),  p.  20 
.iffq.  This  little  volume  is  the  most  ccnvenient  summary  of  the  main  facts 
about  totemism. 


118  TOTEMS   AND  lect.  hi. 

fact  they  are  invested  with  gifts  such  as  we  should  call 
supernatural,  and  of  the  very  same  kind  which  heathenism 
ascribes  to  the  gods — for  example  with  the  power  of 
giving  omens  and  oracles,  of  healing  diseases  and  the 
like. 

The  origin  of  totemism  is  as  much  a  problem  as  the 
origin  of  local  gods.  But  it  is  highly  improbable  that  the 
two  problems  are  independent ;  for  in  both  cases  the 
thing  to  be  explained  is  the  emancipation  of  a  society  of 
men  from  the  dread  of  certain  natural  agencies,  by  the 
establishment  of  the  conception  of  a  physical  alliance  and 
affinity  between  the  two  parts.  It  is  a  strong  thing  to 
suppose  that  a  conception  so  remarkable  as  this,  which  is 
found  all  over  the  world,  and  which  among  savage  races 
is  invariably  put  in  the  totem  form,  had  an  altogether  dis- 
tinct and  independent  origin  among  those  races  which  we 
know  only  in  a  state  of  society  higher  than  that  of  which 
totemism  is  characteristic.  The  belief  in  local  nature-crods 
that  are  also  clan-gods  may  not  be  directly  evolved  out  of 
an  earlier  totemism,  but  there  can  be  no  reasonable  doubt 
that  it  is  evolved  out  of  ideas  or  usages  which  also  find 
their  expression  in  totemism,  and  therefore  must  go  back 
to  the  most  primitive  stage  of  savage  society.  It  is 
important  to  bear  this  in  mind,  if  only  that  we  may  be 
constantly  warned  against  explaining  primitive  religious 
institutions  by  conceptions  that  belong  to  a  relatively 
advanced  stage  of  human  thought.  But  the  comparison 
of  totemism  can  do  more  than  this  negative  service  to  our 
enquiry,  for  it  calls  our  attention  to  certain  habits  of  very 
early  thought  which  throw  light  on  several  points  in  the 
conception  of  local  sanctuaries. 

In  the  system  of  totemism  men  have  relations  not  with 
individual  powers  of  nature,  i.e.  with  gods,  but  with  certain 
classes  of  natural  agents.     The   idea  is   that  nature,  like 


LECT.  iir.  THE   JINN.  1 1  0 

mankind,  is  divided  into  groups  or  societies  of  things, 
analogous  to  the  groups  or  kindreds  of  human  society.  As 
life  analogous  to  human  life  is  imagined  to  permeate  all 
parts  of  the  universe,  the  application  of  this  idea  may 
readily  be  extended  to  inanimate  as  well  as  to  animate 
things.  In  Jotham's  fable  the  trees  are  represented  as  a 
commonwealth  and  make  themselves  a  king  (Judg.  i\.  8 
sqq.),  and  fables,  it  will  be  admitted,  are  only  modern 
reproductions  of  primitive  conceptions  about  the  life  of 
nature.  But  the  statistics  of  totemism  shew  that  the 
natural  kinds  with  which  the  savage  mind  was  most 
occupied  were  the  various  species  of  animals.  It  is  with 
them  especially  that  he  has  permanent  relations  of  kinship 
or  hostility,  and  round  them  are  gathered  in  a  peculiar 
degree  his  superstitious  hopes  and  fears  and  observances. 
Keeping  these  facts  before  us  let  us  look  back  for  a 
moment  at  the  Arabian  jinn.  One  difference  between 
gods  and  jinn  we  have  already  noted ;  the  gods  have 
worshippers  and  the  jinn  have  not.  But  there  is  another 
difference  that  now  forces  itself  on  our  attention ;  the  gods 
have  individuality,  and  the  jinn  have  not.  In  the  Arabian 
Nights  we  fmdijinn  with  individual  names  and  distinctive 
personalities,  but  in  the  old  legends  the  individual  jinnl 
who  may  happen  to  appear  to  a  man  has  no  more  a 
distinct  personality  than   a  beast.^     He  is  only  one  of  a 

'  This  may  be  illustrated  by  reference  to  a  point  of  grammar  which  is  of 
some  interest  and  is  not  made  clear  in  the  ordinary  books.  The  Arab  says 
"  the  ghid  appeared,"  not  "  a  ghfd  appeared,"  jnst  as  David  says,  "the 
lion  came  and  the  bear"  (1  Sam.  xvii.  34;  Amos  iii.  12,  v.  19).  The 
definite  article  is  used  because  in  such  cases  definition  cannot  be  carried 
beyond  the  indication  of  the  species.  The  individuals  are  numerically 
dilferent,  but  qualitatively  indistinguishable.  This  use  of  the  article  is 
sharply  to  be  distinguished  from  such  a  case  as  {f^NH  in  1  Sam.  ix.  9, 
where  the  article  is  generic,  and  a  general  practice  of  men  is  spoken  of, 
and  also  from  cases  like  tS^^DH  (Gen.  xiv.  13),  3*sn,  DIH  ^S3,  etc.,  where 
the  noun  is  really  a  verbal  adjective  implying  an  action,  and  the  person  is 
defined  by  the  action  ascribed  to  him. 


120  THE   JINN   AND 


LECT.   HI. 


group  of  beings  which  to  man  are  indistinguishable  from 
one  another,  and  which  are  regarded  as  making  up  a 
nation  or  clan  of  superhuman  beings,  inhabiting  a  par- 
ticular locality,  and  united  together  by  bonds  of  kinship 
and  by  the  practice  of  the  blood-feud,  so  that  the  whole 
clan  acts  together  in  defending  its  haunts  from  intrusion 
or  in  avenging  on  men  any  injury  done  to  one  of  its 
members.  This  conception  of  the  comnninities  of  the  jinn 
is  precisely  identical  with  the  savage  conception  of  the 
animal  creation.  Each  kind  of  animal  is  regarded  as  an 
organised  kindred,  held  together  by  ties  of  blood  and  the 
practice  of  blood  revenge,  and  so  presenting  a  united  front 
when  it  is  assailed  by  men  in  the  person  of  any  of  its 
members.  Alike  in  the  Arabian  superstitions  about  the 
jinn  and  in  savage  superstitions  about  animals  it  is  this 
solidarity  between  all  the  members  of  one  species,  rather 
than  the  strength  of  the  individual  jinnl  or  animal,  that 
makes  it  an  object  of  superstitious  terror. 

These  points  of  similarity  between  the  families  of  the 
jinn  in  Arabia  and  the  families  of  animals  among  savages 
are  sufSciently  striking,  but  they  do  not  nearly  exhaust  the 
case.  We  have  already  seen  that  the  ji7in  usually  appear 
to  men  in  animal  form,  though  they  can  also  take  the  shape 
of  men.  This  last  feature  however  cannot  be  regarded  as 
constituting  a  fundamental  distinction  between  them  and 
ordinary  animals  in  the  mind  of  the  Arabs,  who  believed 
that  there  were  whole  tribes  of  men  who  had  the  power  of 
assuming  animal  form.^  On  the  whole  it  appears  that  the 
supernatural  powers  of  the  ji7in  do  not  differ  from  those 
which  savages,  in  the  totem  stage,  ascribe  to  wild  beasts. 
They  appear  and  disappear  mysteriously,  and  are  connected 
with  supernatural  voices  and  warnings,  with  unexplained 
sickness  or  death,  just  as  totem  animals  are  ;  they  occasion- 

^  See  Additional  Note  A,  The  tranrformations  of  the  Jinn. 


LECT.    III. 


ANIMAL    KINDS.  121 


ally  enter  into  friendly  relations  or  even  into  marriages 
with  men,  but  animals  do  the  same  in  the  legends  of 
savages  ;  finally,  a  madman  is  possessed  by  the  jinn 
(majniin),  but  there  are  a  hundred  examples  of  the  soul  of 
a  beast  being  held  to  pass  into  a  man.  The  accounts  of 
the  Jinn  which  we  possess  have  come  to  us  from  an  age 
when  the  Arabs  were  no  longer  pure  savages,  and  had 
ceased  to  ascribe  demoniac  attributes  to  most  animals ;  and 
our  narrators,  when  they  repeat  tales  about  animals  endowed 
with  speech  or  supernatural  gifts,  assume  as  a  matter  of 
course  that  they  are  not  ordinary  animals  but  a  special 
class  of  beings.  But  the  stories  themselves  are  just  such 
as  savages  tell  about  real  animals ;  the  blood-feud  between 
the  Banu  Sahm  and  the  ji7i7i  of  Dhii  Tawa  is  simply  a 
war  between  men  and  all  creeping  things,  which,  as  in  the 
Old  Testament,  have  a  common  name  ^  and  are  regarded  as 
a  single  species  or  kindred ;  and  the  "  wild  beast  of  the 
wild  beasts  of  the  jinn,"  which  Taabbata  Sharran  slew  in 
a  night  encounter  and  carried  home  under  his  arm,  was  as 
concrete  an  animal  as  one  can  well  imagine.^  The  proper 
form  of  thejiim  seems  to  be  always  that  of  some  kind  of 
lower  animal,  or  a  monstrous  composition  of  animal  forms, 
as  appears  even  in  later  times  in  the  description  of  the 
four  hundred  and  twenty  species  that  were  marshalled 
before  Solomon.^  But  the  tendency  to  give  human  shape 
to  creatures  that  can  reason  and  speak  is  irresistible  as  soon 
as  men  pass  beyond  pure  savagery,  and  just  as  animal  gods 

1  Hanmh  =  Heb.  pC',  CD"!.  For  the  story  see  AzracT,  p.  261  sqq. ;  Wollli. , 
p.  138. 

"  Agh.  xviii.  210  sqq.  Taabbata  Sharran  is  an  historical  person,  and  the 
incident  also  is  probably  a  fact.  From  the  verses  in  which  he  describes  his 
foe  it  would  seem  that  the  sufiposed  fjhiil  was  one  of  the  feline  carnivora. 
In  Damiri,  ii.  212,  last  line,  a  (jhill  appears  in  the  form  of  a  thieving  cat. 

^  Cazwini,  i.  372  sq.  Even  when  they  appear  in  the  f,'uise  of  men  they 
have  some  animal  attribute,  cj.  a  dog's  hairy  paw  in  place  of  a  band, 
Damiri,  ii.  213,  1.  22. 


122  THE   JINN    AND  lect.  hi. 

pass  over  into  anthropomorphic  gods,  figured  as  riding  on 
animals  or  otherwise  associated  with  them,  the  jinn  begin 
to  be  conceived  as  manhke  in  form,  and  the  supernatural 
animals  of  the  original  conception  appear  as  the  beasts  on 
wliich  they  ride.^  Ultimately  the  only  animals  directly 
and  constantly  identified  with  the  jinn  were  snakes 
and  other  noxious  creeping  things.  The  authority  of 
certain  utterances  of  the  prophet  had  a  share  in  this 
limitation,  but  it  is  natural  enough  that  these  creatures, 
of  which  men  everywhere  have  a  peculiar  horror  and 
which  continue  to  haunt  and  molest  men's  habitations 
after  wild  beasts  have  been  driven  out  into  the  desert, 
should  be  the  last  to  be  stripped  of  their  supernatural 
character.^ 

It  appears  then  that  even  in  modern  accounts  jinn 
and  various  kinds  of  animals  are  closely  associated,  while 

1  The  stories  in  which  the  apparition  takes  this  shape  are  obviously  late. 
When  a  demon  appears  riding  on  a  wolf  or  an  ostrich  to  give  his  opinion  on 
the  merits  of  the  Arabian  poets  [Agh.  viii.  78,  ix.  163,  cited  by  Wellh.,  p.  137), 
we  have  to  do  with  literary  fiction  rather  than  genuine  belief ;  and  similarly 
the  story  of  a  ghrd  who  rides  on  an  ostrich  in  Cazwini,  i.  373  sq.,  is  only  an 
edifying  Moslem  tale.  These  stories  stand  in  marked  contrast  with  the 
genuine  old  story  inMaidani,  i.  181,  where  the  demon  actually  is  an  ostrich. 
Tlie  transition  to  the  anthropomorphic  view  is  seen  in  the  story  of  Taabbata 
Sharran,  where  the  monster  (jhCil  is  called  one  of  the  wild  beasts  of  the  jinn, 
as  if  he  were  only  their  animal  emissary.  The  riding  beasts  of  the  jinn  are 
of  many  species  ;  they  include  the  jackal,  the  gazelle,  the  porcupine,  and  it 
is  mentioned  as  an  exceptional  thing  that  the  hare  is  not  one  of  them  [Sihah 
s.v.  ;  Rasmussen,  Addit.  p.  71,  1.  14),  for  which  reason  amulets  are  made 
from  parts  of  its  body  (cf.  ZDMG.  xxxix.  329).  Prof.  De  Goeje  supplies  me 
with  an  interesting  quotation  from  Zamakhshari,  Fdic,  i.  71  :  "  Ignorant 
people  think  that  wild  beasts  are  the  cattle  of  the  jinn,  and  that  a  man  who 
meets  a  wild  beast  is  affected  by  them  with  mental  disorder."  The  paralys- 
ing effect  of  terror  is  assigned  to  supernatnral  agency.  Cf.  Arist.  Mir.  Ausc. 
145  :  "In  Arabia  there  is  said  to  be  a  kind  of  hyajua,  which  when  it  sees 
a  beast  first  (i.e.  before  being  seen,  Plato,  Rep.  i.  p.  336  D  ;  Theocr.  xiv.  22  ; 
Viro-il,  Ed.  9.  54)  or  treads  on  a  man's  shadow,  renders  it  or  him  incapable 
of  voice  and  movement." 

-  The  snake  is  an  object  of  superstition  in  all  countries.  For  superstitions 
connected  with  "creeping  things"  in  general  among  the  northern  Semites, 
see  Ezek.  viii.  10. 


LKCT.  III.  ANIMAL    KINDS.  123 


ill  the  older  legends  they  are  practically  identified,  and 
also  that  nothing  is  told  of  the  jinn  which  savages  do  not 
tell  of  animals.  Under  these  circumstances  it  recj^uires  a 
very  exaggerated  scepticism  to  doubt  that  the  jiiin,  with  all 
their  mysterious  powers,  are  mainly  nothing  else  than  more 
or  less  modernised  representatives  of  animal  kinds,  clothed 
with  the  supernatural  attributes  inseparable  from  the 
savage  conception  of  animate  nature.  A  species  of  jinn 
allied  by  kinship  with  a  tribe  of  men  would  be  indistin- 
guishable from  a  totem  kind,  and  instead  of  calling  the 
jinn  gods  without  worshippers  we  may,  with  greater  pre- 
cision, speak  of  them  as  potential  totems  without  human 
kinsfolk.  This  view  of  the  nature  of  i\iQ  jinn  helps  us  to 
understand  the  princi})le  on  which  particular  spots  were 
viewed  as  their  haunts.  In  the  vast  solitudes  of  the 
Arabian  desert  every  strange  sound  is  readily  taken  to  be 
the  murmuring  of  i\\Q  jinn,  and  every  strange  sight  to  be  a 
demoniac  apparition.  But,  when  certain  spots  were  fixed 
on  as  being  pre-eminently  haunted  places,  we  must  neces- 
sarily suppose  that  the  sights  and  sounds  that  were  deemed 
supernatural  really  were  more  frequent  there  than  else- 
where. Mere  fancy  might  keep  the  supernatural  reputation 
of  a  place  alive,  but  in  its  origin  even  the  uncontrolled 
imagination  of  the  savage  must  have  some  point  of  contact 
with  reality.  Now  the  nocturnal  sights  and  sounds  that 
affray  the  wayfarer  in  haunted  regions,  and  the  stories  of 
huntsmen  who  go  up  into  a  mountain  of  evil  name  and 
are  carried  of!"  by  the  gliul,  point  distinctly  to  haunted  spots 
being  the  places  where  evil  beasts  walk  by  night.  More- 
over, while  the  jinn  frequent  waste  and  desert  places  in 
general,  their  special  haunts  are  just  those  where  wild 
beasts  gather  most  thickly  —  not  the  arid  and  lifeless 
desert,  but  the  mountain  glades  and  passes,  the  neigh- 
bourhood   of     trees    and    groves,    especially    the     dense 


124  THE   FAVOURITE    HAUNTS  lect.  hi. 

untrodden    thickets    that     occupy    moist    places    in     the 
bottoms  of  the  valleys.^ 

These,  it  is  true,  are  the  places  where  the  spontaneous 
life  of  nature  is  most  actively  exhibited  in  all  its  phases, 
and  where  therefore  it  may  seem  self-evident  that  man  will 
be  most  apt  to  recognise  the  presence  of  divine  or  at  least 
of  superhuman  powers.  But  so  general  an  explanation  as 
this  is  no  explanation  at  all.  Primitive  religion  was 
not  a  philosophical  pantheism,  and  the  primitive  deities 
were  not  vague  expressions  for  the  principle  of  life  in 
nature.  What  we  have  to  explain  is  that  the  places  where 
the  life  of  nature  is  most  intense — or  rather  some  of  these 
places  —  appeared  to  the  -primitive  Semite  to  be  the 
habitations,  not  of  abstract  divine  powers,  but  of  very 
concrete  and  tangible  beings,  with  the  singular  attributes 
which  we  have  found  the  jinn  to  possess,  and  that  this 
belief  did  not  rest  on  mere  general  impressions,  but  was 
supported  by  reference  to  actual  demoniac  apparitions. 
The  usual  vague  talk  about  an  instinctive  sense  of  the 
presence  of  tlie  deity  in  the  manifestations  of  natural  life 
does  not  carry  us  a  wdiit  nearer  the  comprehension  of  these 
beliefs,  but  it  is  helpful  to  note  that  spots  of  natural  fertility, 
untouched  by  man's  hand  and  seldom  trodden  by  his  foot, 
are  the  favoured  haunts  of  wild  beasts,  that  all  savages 
clothe  wild  beasts  and  other  animals  with  the  very  same 

^  All  this,  and  especially  the  association  of  the_/t«n  with  natural  thickets, 
is  well  Lroiiglit  out  by  AVellhausen,  Ileidenthum,  p.  136,  though  he  offers  no 
explanation  of  the  reason  why  "the  direct  impression  of  divine  life  present 
in  nature"  is  associated  with  so  bizarre  a  conception.  In  Southern  Arabia 
natural  jungles  arc  still  avoided  as  the  haunts  of  wild  beasts ;  no  Arab, 
according  to  Wrede,  willingly  spends  a  night  in  the  Wady  Ma'isha, 
because  its  jungles  are  the  haunts  of  many  species  of  dangerous  carni- 
vora  (Wrede's  i?me  in  Hadhraniaut,  ed.  Maltzan,  p.  131).  The  lions  of 
Al-Shara  and  of  the  jungles  of  the  Jordan  valley  (Zeeh.  xi.  3)  may  be  com- 
pared, and  it  is  to  be  remembered  that  in  savage  life,  when  man's  struggle 
with  wild  beasts  is  one  of  life  and  death,  the  awe  associated  with  such  jilaces 
is  magnified  tenfold. 


LECT.  III.  OF    THE   JINN.  125 


supernatural  qualities  which  the  Arabs  ascribe  to  the  jinn, 
and  that  the  Arabs  speak  of  Baccar  as  a  place  famous  for 
its  demons  in  exactly  the  same  matter-of-fact  way  in 
which  they  speak  of  Al-Shara,  and  its  famous  lions. 

While  the  most  marked  attributes  of  the  jinn  are 
plainly  derived  from  animals,  it  is  to  be  remembered  that 
the  savage  imagination,  which  ascribes  supernatural  powers 
to  all  parts  of  animate  nature,  extends  the  sphere  of 
animate  life  in  a  very  liberal  fashion.  Totems  are  not 
seldom  taken  from  trees,  which  appear  to  do '  everything 
for  their  adherents  that  a  totem  animal  could  do.  And 
indeed  that  trees  are  animate,  and  have  perceptions  passions 
and  a  reasonable  soul,  was  argued  even  by  the  early  Greek 
pliilosophers  on  such  evidence  as  their  movements  in  the 
wind  and  the  elasticity  of  their  branches.^  Thus  while 
the  supernatural  associations  of  groves  and  thickets  may 
appear  to  be  sufficiently  explained  by  the  fact  that  these 
are  the  favourite  lairs  of  wild  beasts,  it  appears  probable 
that  the  association  of  certain  kinds  of  jinn  with  trees 
must  in  many  cases  be  regarded  as  primary,  the  trees 
themselves  being  conceived  as  animated  demoniac  beings. 
In  Hadramaut  it  is  still  dangerous  to  touch  the  sensitive 
Mimosa,  because  the  spirit  that  resides  in  the  plant  will 
avenge  the  injury.^  The  same  idea  appears  in  the  story  of 
Harb  b.  Omayya  and  Mirdas  b.  Abl  'Amir,  historical 
persons  who  lived  a  generation  before  Mohammed.  "When 
these  two  men  set  fire  to  an  untrodden  and  tangled  thicket, 
with  the  design  to  bring  it  under  cultivation,  the  demons 
of  the  place  flew  away  with  doleful  cries  in  the  shape  of 
white  serpents,  and  the  intruders  died  soon  afterwards. 
The  jimi  it  was  believed  slew  them  "  because  tliey  had 
set  fire  to  their  dwelling-place."  ^     Here  the  spirits  of  the 

^  Aristotle,  Deplanti^,  i.  p.  815  ;  Plutarch,  Plac.  P/iUos.  v.  2G. 

^  AVrede's  Eeise,  ed.  Mu,ltzau,  p.  131.  ^  A<jh.  vi.  92,  xx.  135  sq. 


126  SAVAGE   VIEWS    OF  lect.  hi. 


trees  take  serpent  form  when  they  leave  their  natural 
seats,  and  similarly  in  Moslem  superstition  the  jinn  of  the 
'oshr  and  the  hamata  are  serpents  which  frequent  trees  of 
these  species.  But  primarily  supernatural  life  and  power 
reside  in  the  trees  themselves,  which  are  conceived  as 
animate  and  even  as  rational.  Moslim  b.  'Ocba  heard  in  a 
dream  the  voice  of  the  gharcad  tree  designating  him  to  the 
command  of  the  army  of  Yazld  against  Medina.^  Or 
again  the  value  of  the  gum  of  the  acacia  (samora)  as  an 
amulet  is  connected  with  the  idea  that  it  is  a  clot  of 
nienstruous  blood  (haid),  i.e.  that  the  tree  is  a  woman.^ 
And  it  has  already  been  remarked  that  the  fables  of  trees 
that  speak  and  act  like  human  beings  ^  have  their  origin  in 
the  savage  personification  of  vegetable  species. 

In  brief  it  is  not  unjust  to  say  that,  wherever  the 
spontaneous  life  of  nature  was  manifested  in  an  emphatic 
way,  the  ancient  Semite  saw  something  supernatural.  But 
this  is  only  half  the  truth;  the  other  half  is  that  the 
supernatural  was  conceived  in  genuinely  savage  fashion, 
and  identified  with  the  quasi-human  life  ascribed  to  the 
various  species  of  animals  or  plants  or  even  of  inorganic 
things. 

For  indeed  certain  phenomena  of  inorganic  nature 
directly  suggest  to  the  primitive  mind  the  idea  of  living 
force,  and  the  presence  of  a  living  agent.  That  the  stars 
move  because  they  are  alive  is  a  widespread  belief,  which 

1  A(jh.  i.  14. 

2  Rasniussen,  Add.  ix  71  ;  Zamakhsliari,  Asds  s.v.  ^^^^aJ^.s^.  New-born 
children's  heads  were  rubbed  with  the  gum  to  keep  away  the  jinn,  just  as 
they  used  to  be  daubed  with  the  blood  of  the  sacrifice  called  'aclca  (see  my 
Kinship,  p.  152).  The  blood  of  menstruation  has  supernatural  qualities 
among  all  races,  and  the  value  of  the  hare's  foot  as  an  amulet  was  connected 
with  the  belief  that  this  animal  menstruates  (Rasm.  ut  sup.).  The  same 
thing  was  affirmed  of  the  hysena,  which  has  many  magical  qualities  and 
peculiar  affinities  to  man  {Kinship,  p.  199). 

2  Judg.  ix.  8  sqq.  ;  2  Kings  xiv.  9. 


LECT.  HT.  TIIK    SUPERNATURAL.  127 

underlies  the  planet  and  constellation  worship  uf  the 
Semites  as  of  other  ancient  nations.  Volcanic  phenomena, 
in  like  manner,  are  taken  for  manifestations  of  supernatural 
life,  as  we  see  in  the  Greek  myths  of  Typhoeus  and  in  the 
]\Ioslem  legend  of  the  crater  of  Barahut  in  Hadramaut, 
whose  rumhlings  are  held  to  be  the  groans  of  lost  souls ;  ^ 
and  again,  mephitic  vapours  rising  from  fissures  in  the 
earth  are  taken  to  be  potent  spiritual  influences.^  But^> 
remote  phenomena  like  the  movements  of  the  stars,  and 
exceptional  phenomena  like  volcanoes,  influence  the  savage 
imagination  less  tlian  mundane  and  everyday  things,  which 
are  not  less  mysterious  to  him  and  touch  his  common  life 
more  closely.  It  seems  to  be  a  mistake  to  suppose  that 
distant  and  exceptional  things  are  those  from  which  primi- 
tive man  forms  his  general  views  of  the  supernatural ;  on 
the  contrary  he  interprets  the  remote  by  the  near,  and 
thinks  of  heavenly  bodies,  for  example,  as  men  or  animals, 
like  the  animate  denizens  of  earth.^  Of  ;ill  inanimate 
things  that  which  has  the  best  marked  supernatural  associa- 
tions among  the  Semites  is  flowing  or  as  the  Hebrews 
say  "  living "  water.  In  one  of  the  oldest  fragments  of 
Hebrew  poetry  *  the  fountain  is  addressed  as  a  living  being ; 
and  sacred  wells  are  among  the  oldest  and  most  ineradicable 

1  See  Yficiit,  i.  r)98  ;  De  Goeje,  Hadramaut,  p.  20  (Rev.  Col.  Intern.  1886). 
Does  this  belief  rest  on  an  early  myth  connected  with  the  name  of  Hadrainuut 
itself?  Sec  Olshansen  in  Rhein.  Mus.  Scr.  3,  vol.  viii.  p.  322  ;  SHzungnb. 
d.  Berliner  Ac.  1879,  p.  571  s^qij. 

-  It  may  be  conjectured  that  the  indignation  of  the  jbm  at  the  violation 
of  their  haunts,  as  it  appears  in  the  story  of  Harb  and  Mirdas,  would  not 
have  been  so  firmly  believed  in  but  for  the  fact  that  places  such  as  the  jiini 
were  thought  to  frecpient  are  also  the  liaunts  of  ague,  which  is  particularly 
active  when  land  is  cultivated  for  the  first  time. 

'  Sec  Lang,  Myth,  Ritual  and  Religion,  chap.  v.  Among  the  Semites  the 
worship  of  sun,  moon  and  stars  does  not  appear  to  have  had  any  great 
vogue  in  the  earliest  times.  Among  the  Hebrews  there  is  little  trace  of  it 
before  Assyrian  influence  became  potent,  and  in  Arabia  it  is  by  no  means 
so  prominent  as  is  sometimes  supposed  ;  cf.  Wellhausen,  p.  173  .S77. 

*  Num.  xxi.  17,  18  :  "Spring  up,  0  well  !  sing  ye  to  it  !  " 


128  ORIGIN    OF  LECT.  III. 


objects  of  reverence  among  all  the  Semites,  and  are 
credited  with  oracular  powers  and  a  sort  of  volition  by 
which  they  receive  or  reject  offerings.^  Of  course  these 
superstitions  often  take  the  form  of  a  belief  that  the  sacred 
spring  is  the  dwelling-place  of  beings  which  from  time  to 
time  emerge  from  it  in  human  or  animal  form,  but  the 
fundamental  idea  is  that  the  water  itself  is  the  living 
organism  of  a  demoniac  life,  not  a  mere  dead  orgau.^ 

If  now  we  turn  from  the  haunts  of  the  demons  to 
sanctuaries  proper,  the  seats  of  known  and  friendly  powers 
with  whom  men  maintain  stated  relations,  we  find  that  in 
their  physical  character  the  homes  of  the  gods  are  precisely 
similar  to  those  of  the  jinn — mountains  and  thickets,  fertile 
spots  beside  a  spring  or  stream,  or  sometimes  points 
defined  by  the  presence  of  a  single  notable  tree.  As  man 
encroaches  on  the  wilderness,  and  brings  these  spots  within 
the  range  of  his  daily  life  and  walk,  they  lose  their  terror 
but  not  their  supernatural  associations,  and  the  friendly  deity 
takes  the  place  of  the  dreaded  demons.  The  conclusion  to 
be  drawn  from  this  is  obvious.  The  physical  characters 
that  were  held  to  mark  out  a  holy  place  are  not  to  be 
explained  by  conjectures  based  on  the  more  developed  type 
of  heathenism,  but  must  be  regarded  as  taken  over  from 
the  primitive  beliefs  of  savage  man.     The  nature  of  the 

1  On  sacred  fountains  among  the  Semites  see  in  general  Baudissin,  Studien, 
ii.  154  sqq.,  and  infra,  p.  153  sqq.  Waters  that  receive  or  reject  offerings— 
the  rejected  gifts  refusing  to  sink  or  being  cast  up  again— are  those  of  Aphaoa 
(Zosimus,  i.  58)  and  the  Stygian  cataract  at  Dia  in  the  Nabataean  desert 
(Damascius,  VifLsid.  §  199).  At  Daphne  oracles  were  obtained  by  dipping 
a  laurel  leaf  in  the  sacred  stream  (Sozomen,  v.  19).  Cf.  the  ordeal  by  casting 
a  tablet  into  the  water  at  rali(;i  in  Sicily :  the  tablet  sank  if  what  was 
written  on  it  was  false  (Arist.,  il/ir.  Ausc.  57).  I  cite  these  particulars  here 
because  they  are  most  naturally  understood  as  implying  a  belief  that  the 
water  itself  was  instinct  with  divine  life  and  not  merely  a  mechanical  organ 
of  a  deity  outside. 

-  In  Arabian  belief  healing  springs  derive  their  power  from  jinn  ; 
examples,  ZDMG.  xxxviii.  586  sq. 


I.ECT.    III. 


HOLY    PLACES.  129 


god  did  not  determine  the  place  of  his  sanctuary,  but 
conversely  the  features  of  the  sanctuary  had  an  important 
share  in  determining  the  development  of  ideas  as  to  the 
functions  of  the  god.  How  tliis  was  possible  we  have  seen 
in  the  conception  of  the  local  Baalim.  The  spontaneous 
lu.xuriance  of  marshy  lands  already  possessed  supernatural 
associations  when  there  was  no  thought  of  bringing  it 
under  the  service  of  man  by  cultivation,  and  when  the  rich 
valley  bottoms  were  avoided  with  superstitious  terror  as 
the  haunts  of  formidable  natural  enemies.  How  this 
terror  was  first  broken  througli,  and  the  transformation  of 
certain  groups  of  hostile  demons  into  friendly  and  kindred 
powers  was  first  effected,  we  cannot  tell ;  we  can  only  say 
that  the  same  transformation  is  already  effected,  by  means 
of  totemism,  in  tlie  most  primitive  societies  of  savages,  and 
that  there  is  no  record  of  a  stage  in  human  society  in  which 
each  community  of  men  did  not  claim  kindred  and  alliance 
with  some  group  or  species  of  the  living  powers  of  nature. 
])ut  if  we  take  this  decisive  step  for  granted,  the  subsequent 
development  of  the  relation  of  the  gods  to  the  land  follows  by 
a  kind  of  moral  necessity,  and  the  transformation  of  the  vague 
friendly  powers  that  haunt  the  seats  of  spontaneous  natural 
life  into  the  beneficent  agricultural  Baalim,  the  lords  of  the 
land  and  its  waters,  the  givers  of  life  and  fertility  to  all  that 
dwell  on  it,  goes  naturally  hand  in  hand  with  the  develoj)- 
ment  of  agriculture  and  the  laws  of  agricultural  society. 

I  have  tried  to  put  this  argument  in  such  a  way  as  may 
not  comuiit  us  prematurely  to  the  hypothesis  that  the 
friendly  powers  of  the  Semites  were  originally  totems,  i.e. 
that  the  relations  of  certain  kindred  communities  of  men 
with  certain  groups  of  natural  powers  were  established 
before  these  natural  powers  had  ceased  to  be  directly 
identified  with  species  of  plants  and  animals.  But  if  my 
analysis  of  the  nature  of  the  jinn  is  correct,  the  conclusion 


130  SEMITIC  LECT.    III. 

that  the  Semites  did  pass  through  the  totem  stage  can  be 
avoided  only  by  supposing  them  to  be  an  exception  to  the 
universal  rule,  that  even  the  most  primitive  savages  liave 
not  only  enemies  but  permanent  allies  (which  at  so  early  a 
stage  in  society  necessarily  means  kinsfolk)  among  the 
non-human  or  super-human  animate  kinds  by  which  the 
universe  is  peopled.  And  this  supposition  is  so  extrava- 
gant that  no  one  is  likely  to  adopt  it.  On  the  other  hand 
it  may  be  argued  with  more  plausibility  that  totemism,  if 
it  ever  did  exist,  disappeared  when  the  Semites  emerged 
from  savagery,  and  that  it  is  open  to  us  to  suppose  that 
the  religion  of  the  race,  in  its  higher  stages,  rested  on 
altogether  independent  bases.  Whether  this  hypothesis  is 
or  is  not  admissible  must  be  determined  by  an  actual 
examination  of  the  higher  heathenism.  If  its  rites  usages 
and  beliefs  really  are  independent  of  savage  ideas,  and  of 
the  purely  savage  conception  of  nature  of  which  totemism 
is  only  one  aspect,  the  hypothesis  is  legitimate ;  but  it  is 
not  legitimate  if  the  higher  heathenism  itself  is  permeated 
in  all  its  parts  by  savage  ideas,  and  if  its  ritual  and  insti- 
tutions are  throughout  in  the  closest  contact  with  savage 
ritual  and  institutions  of  totem  type.  That  the  latter  is 
the  true  state  of  the  case  will  I  believe  become  over- 
whelmingly clear  as  we  proceed  with  our  survey  of  the 
phenomena  of  Semitic  religion ;  and  a  very  substantial 
step  towards  the  proof  that  it  is  so  has  already  been  taken, 
when  we  have  found  that  the  sanctuaries  of  the  Semitic 
world  are  identical  in  physical  character  with  the  haunts 
of  the  jinn,  so  that  as  regards  their  local  associations  the 
gods  must  be  viewed  as  simply  replacing  the  plant  and 
animal  demons.^  If  this  is  so  we  can  hardly  avoid  the 
1  The  complete  development  of  this  argument  as  it  bears  on  the  nature  of 
the  gods  must  be  reserved  for  a  later  course  of  lectures  ;  but  a  provisional 
discussion  of  some  points  on  -which  a  difficulty  mny  arise  will  be  found 
below  :  see  Additional  Nott  B,  Gods,  Demons,  and  Flcuds  or  Animals. 


LECT.  III.  TOTEMISM.  131 

conclusion  that  some  of  the  Semitic  gods  are  of  totem 
origin,  and  we  may  expect  to  find  the  most  distinct  traces 
of  this  origin  at  the  oldest  sanctuaries.  But  we  are  not  to 
suppose  that  every  local  deity  will  have  totem  associations, 
for  new  gods  as  well  as  new  sanctuaries  might  doubtless 
spring  up  at  a  later  stage  of  human  progress  than  that  of 
which  totemism  is  characteristic.  Even  holy  places  that 
had  an  old  connection  with  the  demons  may,  in  many 
instances,  not  have  come  to  be  looked  upon  as  the  abode  of 
friendly  powers  and  become  sanctuaries  proper,  i.e.  seats  of 
worship,  till  the  demons  had  ceased  to  be  directly  identified 
with  species  of  plants  and  animals,  and  had  acquired  quasi- 
human  forms  like  the  nymphs  and  satyrs  of  the  Greeks. 
It  is  one  thing  to  say  that  the  phenomena  of  Semitic 
religion  carry  us  back  to  totemism,  and  another  thing  to 
say  that  they  are  all  to  be  explained  from  totemism. 


LECTUEE    IV. 

HOLY    PLACES    IN    THEIR    RELATION    TO    MAN. 

I  HAVE  spoken  hitherto  of  tlie  physical  characters  of  the 
sanctuary,  as  the  haunt  of  divine  beings  that  prove,  in  the 
last  resort,  to  be  themselves  parts  of  the  mundane  universe, 
and  so  have  natural  connections  with  sacred  localities ;  let 
us  now  proceed  to  look  at  the  places  of  the  gods  in  another 
aspect,  to  wit  in  their  relation  to  men,  and  the  conduct 
which  men  are  called  upon  to  observe  at  and  towards  them. 
The  fundamental  principle  by  which  this  is  regulated  is 
that  the  sanctuary  is  holy,  and  must  not  be  treated  as  a 
common  place.  The  distinction  between  what  is  holy  and 
what  is  common  is  one  of  the  most  important  things  in 
ancient  religion,  but  also  one  which  it  is  very  difficult  to 
grasp  precisely,  because  its  interpretation  varied  from  age 
to  age  with  the  general  progress  of  religious  thought.  To 
us  holiness  is  an  ethical  idea.  God,  the  perfect  being,  is 
the  type  of  holiness ;  men  are  holy  in  proportion  as  their 
lives  and  character  are  godlike ;  places  and  things  can  be 
called  holy  only  by  a  figure,  on  account  of  their  associa- 
tions with  spiritual  things.  This  conception  of  holiness 
goes  back  to  the  Hebrew  prophets,  especially  to  Isaiah ; 
but  it  is  not  the  ordinary  conception  of  antique  religion, 
nor  does  it  correspond  to  the  original  sense  of  the  Semitic 
words  that  we  translate  by  "  holy."  While  it  is  not  easy 
to  fix  the  exact  idea  of  holiness  in  ancient  Semitic  reliojion, 
it  is  quite  certain  that  it  has  nothing  to  do  with  morality 

138 


I.KCT.    IV. 


HOLINESS.  ir53 


and  purity  of  life.  Holy  persons  were  such,  nut  in  virtue 
of  their  character  but  in  virtue  of  their  race,  function,  or 
mere  material  consecration ;  and  at  the  Canaanite  shrines 
the  name  of  "  holy "  (masc.  cSdcshlm,  feni.  cedcshoth)  was 
specially  appropriated  to  a  class  of  dcgriideJ  wretches, 
devoted  to  the  most  shameful  practices  of  a  corrupt 
religion,  whose  life,  apart  from  its  connection  with  the 
sanctuary,  would  have  been  disgraceful  even  from  the 
standpoint  of  heathenism.  But  holiness  in  antique 
religion  is  not  mainly  an  attribute  of  persons.  The  gods 
are  holy,^  and  their  ministers  of  whatever  kind  or  grade 
are  holy  also,  but  holy  seasons  holy  places  and  holy 
tilings,  that  is  seasons  places  and  things  that  stand  in  a 
special  relation  to  the  godhead  and  are  withdrawn  by 
divine  sanction  from  some  or  all  ordinary  uses,  are 
equally  to  be  considered  in  determining  what  holiness 
means.  Indeed  the  holiness  of  the  gods  is  an  expression 
to  which  it  is  hardly  possible  to  attach  a  definite  sense 
apart  from  the  holiness  of  their  physical  surroundings  ; 
it  shows  itself  in  and  by  the  sanctity  attached  to  the 
persons  places  things  and  times  through  which  the  gods 
and  men  come  in  contact  with  one  another.  The  holiness 
of  the  sanctuary,  which  is  the  matter  immediately  before 
us,  seems  also  to  be  on  the  whole  the  particular  form  of 
sanctity  which  lends  itself  most  readily  to  independent 
investigation.  Holy  persons  holy  things  and  holy  times, 
as  they  are  conceived  in  antiquity,  all  presuppose  the 
existence  of  holy  places  at  which  the  persons  minister, 
the  things  are  preserved,  and  the  times  are  celebrated. 
Nay  the  holiness  of  the  godhead  itself  is  manifest  to  men,i 
not  equally  at  all  places,  but  specially  at  those  places 
where  the  gods  are  immediately  present  and   from  which 

'  The  Phceniciaiis  speak  of  "tlie  holy   gods"  (D::npn  DibsH,    C.   1.    S. 
No.  3,  1.  9,  22),  as  the  Hebrews  predicate  holiness  of  Jehovah, 


134  SACRED   TRACTS  •  lf.ct.  iv. 

their  activity  proceeds.  In  fact  the  idea  of  holiness  comes 
into  prominence  wherever  the  gods  come  into  touch  with 
men  ;  holiness  is  not  so  much  a  thing  that  characterises  the 
gods  and  divine  things  in  themselves,  as  the  most  general 
notion  that  governs  their  relations  with  humanity ;  and,  as 
these  relations  are  concentrated  at  particular  points  of  the 
earth's  surface,  it  is  at  these  points  that  we  must  expect  to 
find  the  clearest  indications  of  what  holiness  means. 

At  first  sight  the  holiness  of  the  sanctuary  may  seem 
to  be  only  the.  expression  of  the  idea  that  the  sanctuary 
belongs  to  the  god,  that  the  temple  and  its  precincts  are 
his  homestead  and  domain,  reserved  for  his  use  and  that 
of  his  ministers,  as  a  man's  house  and  estate  are  reserved 
/  for  himself  and  his  household.  In  one  respect,  at  least,  the 
sanctuary  exactly  resembles  private  property ;  it  cannot  be 
appropriated  to  the  private  use  of  any  other  person  than 
the  god.  !Not  only  is  no  one  permitted  to  appropriate  the 
soil  but  no  one  is  permitted  to  make  private  invasions  on 
the  pertinents  of  the  sanctuary.  In  Arabia  for  example, 
where  there  were  great  tracts  of  sacred  land,  it  was  for- 
bidden to  cut  fodder,  fell  trees,  or  hunt  game ;  ^  all  the 
natural  products  of  the  holy  soil  were  exempt  from  human 
appropriation.      But   it   would   be   rash    to    conclude   that 

^AVellh.,  Heidenthum,  p.  102,  and  refs.  there  given  to  the  ordinances  laid 
down  by  Mohammed  for  the  Haram  of  Mecca  and  the  Himd  of  Wajj  at 
Tfiif.  In  both  cases  the  ordinance  was  a  confirmation  of  old  usage.  At 
IMecca  the  law  against  killing  or  chasing  animals  did  not  apply  to  certain 
noxious  creatures.  Tlie  usually  received  tradition  (Bokhfiri,  ii.  195,  of  the 
Billac  vocalised  ed.)  names  the  raven  and  the  kite,  the  rat,  the  scorpion  and 
the  "biting  dog,"  which  is  taken  to  cover  the  lion,  panther,  and  wolf,  and 
other  carnivora  that  attack  man  (Mowatta,  ii.  198).  The  serpent  also  was 
killed  without  scruple  at  Mina,  which  is  within  the  Haram  (Bokh.  ii.  196, 
1.  1  >iqq.).  That  the  protection  of  the  god  is  not  extended  to  manslaying 
animals  and  to  the  birds  of  prey  that  molest  the  sacred  doves  is  intelligible. 
The  permission  to  kill  vermin  is  to  be  compared  with  the  story  of  the  war 
between  the  Jinn  and  the  B.  Sahm  {■•mpra,  p.  121).  From  the  law  against 
cutting  plants  the  idkhir  {Avdropogon  sduenanthus,  or  lemon-grass)  was 
excepted  by  Mohammed  with  some  hesitation,  on  the  demand  of  Al-'Abbiis, 


I.KCT.    IV. 


IN    ARABIA.  13; 


what  cannot  be  the  private  property  of  men  is  therefore 
the  private  property  of  the  gods,  reserved  for  the  exclusive 
use  of  them  or  their  ministers.  The  positive  exercise 
of  legal  rights  of  property  on  the  part  of  the  gods  is  only 
possible  where  they  have  human  representatives  to  act 
for  them,  and  no  doubt  in  later  times  the  priests  at  the 
greater  heathen  sanctuaries,  and  the  Caliphs  as  Allah's 
vicegerents  in  Islam,  did  treat  the  holy  reservations  as 
their  own  domain.  But  in  early  times  there  was  no 
privileged  class  of  sacred  persons  which  had  an  interest 
in  asserting  on  their  own  behalf  the  doctrine  of  divine 
proprietorship,  and  in  these  times  accordingly  the  prohibi- 
tion of  private  encroachment  was  consistent  with  the 
existence  of  public  or  communal  rights  in  holy  places  and 
things.  In  nomadic  Arabia  sanctuaries  are  certainly  older 
than  the  first  beginnings  of  private  property  in  land.  To 
constitute  private  property,  according  to  the  ancient 
doctrine  still  preserved  in  Moslem  law,  a  man  must  build 
on  the  soil  or  cultivate  it ;  there  is  no  property  in  natural 
pastures.  Every  tribe  indeed  has  its  own  range  of  plains 
and  valleys,  and  its  own  watering-places,  by  which  it 
habitually  encamps  at  certain  seasons  and  from  which  it 
repels  aliens  by  the  strong  hand.  But  this  does  not  con- 
stitute property,  for  the  boundaries  of  the  tribal  land  are 

who  poiiitt'd  out  tbat  it  was  the  custom  to  allow  it  to  be  cut  for  certain 
l)ur[)oscs.  Here  unf'ortuuatel}'  our  texts  arc  obscure  and  vary  greatly,  but 
the  variations  all  depciKl  on  the  reading  of  two  words  of  which  one  is  either 
"smiths"  or  "graves"  and  the  other  "  imrilicatiou  "  or  "roofs"  of  houses. 
In  the  Arabic  the  variations  turn  on  snuiU  graphical  jioints  often  lelt 
out  by  scribes.  I  take  it  that  originally  the  two  uses  were  either  both 
practical,  "for  the  smiths  and  the  (thatching  of)  house-roofs,"  or  both 
ccreiuonial,  "for  entombment  and  the  purification  of  houses."  As  the 
Icmun-grass  was  valued  in  antiquity  for  its  perfume,  ami  the  fragrant 
hannal  was  also  used  in  old  Arabia  to  lay  the  dead  in,  and  is  still  used  to 
fumigate  houses,  the  second  reading  is  the  better.  The  lenion-grass  might 
be  cut  for  purposes  of  a  religious  or  (piasi-religious  character.  ^lohamnicd 
probably  hesitated  because  these  uses  were  connected  with  heathen 
superstition.     Cf,  Muh.  in  Medina,  p.  338, 


13G  SACRED    TRACTS  lkct.  iv. 

merely  niaiiitaineJ  by  force  against  enemies,  and  not  only 
every  tribesman  but  every  covenanted  ally  has  equal  and 
unrestricted  right  to  pitch  liis  tent  and  drive  his  cattle 
where  he  will.  On  this  analogy  we  can  understand  that 
the  haunts  of  unfriendly  demons  will  be  shunned  for  fear 
of  their  enmity,  but  the  friendly  god  can  have  no  exclusive 
right  of  property  as  against  his  own  worshippers.  And  so 
we  find  that  in  upland  Arabia  there  were  tracts  of  sacred 
land  called  himd  which  were  to  all  intents  and  purposes 
common  pasture  grounds,  and  whose  sanctity  was  marked, 
not  by  the  exclusion  of  man,  but  by  the  fact  that  no  single 
tribe  dared  to  appropriate  them,  and  that  respect  for  the 
holy  place,  where  every  sojourner  was  under  the  immediate 
protection  of  the  god,  enabled  hostile  clans  to  meet  and 
(hive  their  flocks  together  in  peace,  whereas  on  any  other 
ground  they  would  have  flown  at  each  other's  throats.^ 

In  Arabia  chiefs  as  well  as  gods  had  their  himd.  In 
the  times  of  heathenism  when  a  chieftain  camped  at  a 
place  with  his  followers,  no  one  else  was  allowed  to  pasture 
his  cattle  where  the  barking  of  his  doct  could  be  heard,  biit 

^  See  Wellhaiiscn,  op.  elf.  p.  103  sq.,  who  thinks  that  these  himds  were 
more  or  less  coinplttely  secularised,  ami  that  in  early  times  the  sacred 
jiastures  were  reserved  for  the  herds  of  the  god.  lUit  the  characteristic 
tiling  is  that  on  the  sacred  pastures  rival  tribes  met  in  peace,  as  tliey  did 
ill  the  hnram  of  Mecca,  which  implies  a  very  lively  sense  of  the  divine 
jiresence  and  authority.  It  does  indeed  appear  probable  that  at  one  time 
certain  tracts  of  holy  ground  were  absolutely  forbidden  to  human  apjjroacli 
(infra,  p.  146),  but  in  a  state  of  soeietj'  where  property  in  land  was  unknown, 
the  meaning  of  this  cannot  have  been  that  tliey  were  the  private  pasture 
ground  of  the  deity.  The  prohibition,  as  we  shall  see,  was  of  the  nature  of 
a  taboo,  an  idea  older  than  the  institution  of  property.  Sacred  animals 
themselves,  wliether  wild  or  of  domestic  species,  were  not  so  much  tlie 
property  of  the  god  as  taboo  to  him.  He  protected  them,  but  did  not  use 
them.  The  oldest  e.\ami)le  of  an  Arabian  sacred  region  is  Mount  Horeb. 
At  the  theophany  Exodus  xix.  the  whole  mountaiu  is  fenced  off,  and  neither 
man  nor  beast  is  allowed  to  approach  it,  but  this  seems  to  be  a  temporary 
]iroliibition,  and  in  Exod.  iii.  1  -sqq.,  it  seems  probable  tliat  Moses  drove  his 
flocks  to  pasture  on  the  holy  ground.  In  any  case  the  prohibition  of  access 
does  not  turn  on  the  idea  of  juoperty,  but  on  the  awfulness  of  the  presence 
ol  God. 


LECT.    IV. 


IN    ARABIA.  lo7 


beyond  this  range  the  pasture  was  common.^  This  is  not 
a  right  of  property,  but  it  is  exactly  on  all  fours  with 
the  right  of  taboo  exercised  by  a  Polynesian  chief.  The 
chief  in  Polynesia  has  a  sacred  character ;  so  apparently 
had  Arabian  chiefs,  for  kings'  blood  cures  hydrophobia,  as 
in  the  Mitldle  Ages  the  touch  of  the  king  cured  scrofula. 

Here  we  have  a  type  of  sanctuary  to  all  appearance  older 
than  the  institution  of  property  in  land.  But  even  where 
the  doctrine  of  property  is  fully  developed,  holy  places  and 
holy  things,  except  where  they  have  been  appropriated  to 
the  use  of  kings  and  priests,  fall  under  the  head  of  public 
rather  than  of  private  estate.  According  to  ancient  con- 
ceptions the  interests  of  the  god  and  his  community  are 
too  closely  identified  to  admit  of  a  sharp  distinction 
between  sacred  purposes  and  public  purposes,  and  as  a  rule 
nothing  is  claimed  for  the  god  in  which  his  worshippers 
have  not  a  right  to  share.  Even  the  holy  dues  presentetl 
at  the  sanctuary  are  not  reserved  for  the  private  use  of  the 
deity,  but  are  used  to  furnish  forth  sacrificial  feasts  in 
which  all  who  are  present  partake.  So  too  the  sanctuaries 
of  ancient  cities  served  the  purpose  of  public  parks  and 
public  halls,  and  the  treasures  of  the  gods,  accumulated 
within  them,  were  a  kind  of  state  treasure,  preserved  by 
religious  sanctions  against  peculation  and  individual  en- 
croachment, but  available  for  public  objects  in  time  of 
need.  The  Canaanites  of  Shechem  took  monev  from  their 
temple  to  provide  means  for  Abimelech's  enterprise,  when 
they  resolved  to  make  him  their  king,  and  the  sacred 
treasure  of  Jerusalem,  originally  derived  from  the  fruits  of 
David's  campaigns,  was  used  by  his  successors  as  a  reserves 
fund  available  in  great  emercjencies.  On  the  whole  tlun 
it  is  evident  that  the  diflerence  between  holy  things  and 

^  yiicut,  ii.  34-1,  from  Al-Slifiti'i  ;  but  Jluuxlsn,  p.  420,  Maiilfiiii,   i.  427, 
Ayh.  iv.  140  relate  this  as  a  peculiarity  ol'  the  arrogant  Kolaib. 


J 

138  HOLINESS    AND  lect.  iv. 


common  things  does  not  originally  turn  on  ownership,  as  if 
common  things  belonged  to  men  and  holy  things  to  the 
gods.  Indeed  there  are  many  holy  things  which  are  also 
private  property,  images,  for  example,  and  the  other 
appurtenances  of  domestic  sanctuaries. 

Thus  far  it  would  appear  that  the  rights  of  the  gods  in 
lioly  places  and  things  fall  short  of  ownership,  because 
they  do  not  exclude  a  right  of  user  or  even  of  property 
by  man  in  the  same  things.  But  in  other  directions  the 
prerogatives  of  the  gods,  in  respect  of  that  wdiich  is  holy,  go 
beyond  wdiat  is  involved  in  ownership.  The  approach  to 
ancient  sanctuaries  was  surrounded  by  restrictions  which 
cannot  be  regarded  as  designed  to  protect  the  property  of 
the  gods,  but  rather  fall  under  the  notion  that  the  gods 
will  not  tolerate  the  vicinity  of  certain  persons — e.g.  such 
as  are  physically  unclean — and  certain  actions — e.g.  the 
shedding  of  blood.  Nay  in  many  cases  the  assertion  of  a 
man's  undoubted  rights  as  against  a  fugitive  at  the  sanctuary 
is  regarded  as  an  encroachment  on  its  holiness ;  justice 
cannot  strike  the  criminal,  and  a  master  cannot  recover  his 
runaway  slave,  who  has  found  asylum  on  holy  soil.  In 
the  Old  Testament  the  legal  right  of  asylum  is  limited  to 
the  case  of  involuntary  homicide ;  ^  but  the  wording  of  the 
law  shows  tliat  this  was  a  narrowing  of  ancient  custom, 
and  many  heathen  sanctuaries  of  the  Phoenicians  and 
Syrians  retained  even  in  lioman  times  what  seems  to  have 
l)een  an  unlimited  right  of  asylum.^     At  certain  Arabian 

^  Exod.  xxi.  13,  14.  Here  the  right  of  asylum  belongs  to  all  altar.s,  but 
it  was  afterwards  limited,  on  the  abolition  of  the  local  altars,  to  certain  old 
sanctuaries — the  cities  of  refuge. 

^  This  follows  especially  from  the  account  in  Tacitus,  An7i.  iii.  60  sqq.,  of 
the  enquiry  made  by  Tilierius  into  abuses  of  tlie  right  of  asylum.  Among 
the  holy  places  to  which  the  right  was  confirmed  after  due  investigation 
were  Paphos  and  Annithus,  both  of  them  Phcenician  sanctuaries.  There 
was  also  a  right  of  asylum  at  Daphne  near  Antioch  (Strabo,  xvi.  2,  6  ;  2  Mac. 
iv.  33),  and  many  Phtenician  and  Syrian  towns  are  designated  as  asylums  on 


I-ECT.    IV. 


PROPERTY.  139 


sanctuaries  the  god  gave  shelter  to  all  fugitives  without 
distinction,  and  even  stray  camels  that  reached  the  holy 
ground  became  free  from  their  owners.^  What  was  done 
witli  these  camels  is  not  stated,  hut  it  is  to  be  presumed 
that  they  enjoyed  the  same  liberty  as  the  consecrated 
animals  wliich  the  Arabs,  for  various  reasons,  were  accus- 
tomed to  release  from  service  and  suffer  to  roam  half  wild 
over  the  sacred  pastures.  These  herds  seem  to  be  sometimes 
spoken  of  as  the  property  of  the  deity,"  but  they  were  not 
used  for  liis  service.  Their  consecration  was  simply  a 
limitation  of  man's  risfht  to  use  them.'*^ 

"We  have  here  another  indication  that  the  relations  of 
holiness  to  the  institution  of  property  are  mainly  negative. 
Holy  places  and  things  are  not  so  much  reserved  for  the 
use  of  the  god  as  surrounded  by  a  network  of  restrictions 
and  disabilities  which  forbid  them  to  be  used  by  men 
except  in  particular  ways,  and  in  certain  cases  forbid  them 
to  be  used  at  all.  As  a  rule  the  restrictions  are  such  as 
to  prevent  the  appropriation  of  holy  things  by  men,  and 
sometimes  they  cancel  existing  rights  of  property.  But 
they  do  so  only  by  limiting  the  right  of  user,  and  in  the 
case  of  objects  like  idols,  wliich  no  one  would  propose  to 

their  coins;  see  Head,  Greek  Num.,  Index  iv.,  under  A2TA02  and  lEPAS 
ASTAOr.  The  Heracleuni  at  the  fishmiring  station  near  the  Canobic  nioutli 
of  the  Nile  (Herod.,  ii.  113)  may  also  be  cited,  for  its  name  and  place  leave 
little  doubt  that  it  was  a  Phcenician  temple.  Here  the  fugitive  slave  was 
dedicated  by  being  tattooed  with  sacred  marks — a  Semitic  custom  ;  cf.  Lucian, 
Dea  Syria,  lix.,  and  A<jhdnl,  vii.  110,  1.  2(5,  where  an  Arab  patron  stamps 
his  clients  with  his  camel  mark.     I  owe  the  last  reference  to  Prof.  De  Goeje. 

'  Yacut  s.vv.  JuIxckI  and  /"a/s ;  "Wcllhausen,  pp.  48,  .^0.  It  is  plain  from 
the  texts  that  Jliese  camels  were  not  confiscated  as  a  punislmient  for  their 
trespass,  but  were  set  free  by  an  extension  of  the  law  of  asylum.  In  the 
same  way  wild  bciists  could  not  be  molested  within  the  /jimd. 

-  Seethe  verse  from  Ibn, Hishfim,  p.  58,  explained  by  Wellh.,  ]>.  103. 

^  E.g.  their  milk  might  be  drunk  only  by  guests  (Ibn  Hishilm,  p.  hi). 
Similarly,  consecration  sometimes  meant  no  more  than  that  men  might  eat 
the  flesh  but  not  women,  or  that  only  particular  persons  might  eat  of  it 
(Sura,  vi.  139  S7.). 


140  RULES    OF  LECT.  IV. 

use  except  for  sacred  purposes,  a  thing  may  be  holy  and 
still  be  private  property.  From  this  point  of  view  it 
would  appear  that  common  things  are  such  as  men  have 
licence  to  use  freely  at  their  own  good  pleasure  without 
fear  of  supernatural  penalties,  while  holy  things  may  be 
used  only  in  prescribed  ways  and  under  definite  restrictions, 
on  pain  of  the  anger  of  the  gods.  That  holiness  is  essen- 
tially a  restriction  on  the  licence  of  man  in  the  free  use  of 
natural  things  seems  to  be  confirmed  by  the  Semitic  roots 
used  to  express  the  idea.  No  stress  can  be  laid  on  the 
root  ^Ip,  which  is  that  commonly  used  by  the  northern 
Semites,  for  of  this  the  original  meaning  is  very  uncertain, 
though  there  is  some  probability  that  it  implies  "separation" 
or  "  withdrawal."  But  the  root  Din,  which  is  mainly  em- 
ployed in  Arabic  but  runs  through  the  whole  Semitic  field, 
undoubtedly  conveys  the  notion  of  prohibition,  so  that  a 
sacred  thing  is  one  which,  whether  absolutely  or  in  certain 
relations,  is  prohibited  to  human  use.^  The  same  idea  of 
prohibition  or  interdiction  associated  with  that  of  protection 
from  encroachment  is  found  in  the  root  "Dn,  from  which 
is  derived  the  word  himd,  denoting  a  sacred  enclosure  or 
temenos. 

We  have  already  found  reason  to  think  that  in  Arabia 
the  holiness  of  places  is  older  than  tlie  institution  of 
property  in  land,  and  the  view  of  holiness  that  has  just 
l)een  set  forth  enables  us  to  understand  why  it  should  be 
so.  We  have  found  that  from  the  earliest  times  of  savagery 
certain  spots  were  dreaded  and  shunned  as  the  haunts  of 
supernatural  beings.  These  however  are  not  holy  places 
any  more  than  an  enemy's  ground  is  holy ;  they  are  not 

1  In  Hebrew  this  root  is  mainly  applied  to  such  consecration  as  implies 
ahsoliite  separation  from  human  use  and  association,  i.e.  the  total  destruction 
of  an  accursed  thing,  or  in  more  modern  times  excommunication. 

-  Hence  perhaps  the  name  of  Hamath  on  theOrontes;  Lagarde,  Bildmuj  der 
Xumina,  p.  156. 


LKCT.  TV.  HOLINESS.  141 

hedged  round  by  definite  restrictions,  but  altogether  avoided 
as  full  of  indefinite  dangers.  But  when  men  establisli 
relations  with  the  powers  that  haunt  a  spot  it  is  at  once 
necessary  that  there  should  be  rules  of  conduct  towards 
them  and  their  surroundings.  These  rules  moreover  have 
two  aspects.  On  the  one  hand  the  god  and  his  worshippers 
form  a  single  community — primarily,  let  us  suppose,  a 
community  of  kinship— and  so  all  the  social  laws  that 
regulate  men's  conduct  towards  a  clansman  are  applicable 
to  their  relations  to  the  god.  But  on  the  other  hand  the 
god  has  natural  relations  to  certain  physical  things,  and 
these  must  be  respected  also ;  he  has  himself  a  natural  life 
and  natural  habits  in  which  he  must  not  be  molested. 
Moreover  the  mysterious  superhuman  powers  of  the  god — 
the  powers  which  we  call  supernatural — are  manifested, 
according  to  primitive  ideas,  in  and  through  his  physical 
life,  so  that  every  place  and  thing  which  has  natural 
associations  with  the  god  is  regarded,  if  I  may  borrow  a 
metaphor  from  electricity,  as  charged  with  divine  energy 
and  ready  at  any  moment  to  discharge  itself  to  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  man  who  presumes  to  approach  it  unduly. 
Hence  in  all  their  dealings  with  natural  things  men  must 
be  on  their  guard  to  respect  the  divine  prerogative,  and 
this  they  are  able  to  do  by  knowing  and  observing  the  rules 
of  holiness,  which  prescribe  definite  restrictions  and  limita- 
tions in  their  dealings  with  the  god  and  all  natural  things 
that  in  any  way  pertain  to  the  god.  Thus  we  see  that 
holiness  is  not  necessarily  limited  to  things  that  are  tlie 
property  of  the  deity  to  the  exclusion  of  men ;  it  applies 
equally  to  things  in  which  both  gods  and  men  have  an 
interest,  and  in  the  latter  case  the  rules  of  holiness  are 
directed  to  regulate  man's  use  of  the  holy  thing  in 
such  a  way  that  the  godhead  may  not  be  ofTended  or 
wronged. 


142  HOLINESS   AND  lect.  iv. 

Eules  of  holiness  in  the  sense  just  explained,  i.e.  a 
system  of  restrictions  on  man's  arbitrary  use  of  natural 
things,  enforced  by  the  dread  of  supernatural  penalties  ^  are 
found  among  all  primitive  peoples.  It  is  convenient  to 
have  a  distinct  name  for  this  primitive  institution,  to  mark 
it  off'  from  the  later  developments  of  the  idea  of  holiness 
in  advanced  religions,  and  for  this  purpose  the  Polynesian 
term  taboo  has  been  selected.^  The  field  covered  by  taboos 
among  savage  and  half-savage  races  is  very  wide,  for  there 
is  no  part  of  life  in  which  the  savage  does  not  feel  himself 
to  be  surrounded  by  mysterious  agencies  and  recognise  the 
need  of  walking  warily.  Moreover  all  taboos  do  not 
belong  to  religion  proper,  that  is,  they  are  not  always  rules 
of  conduct  for  the  regulation  of  man's  contact  with  deities 
that,  when  taken  in  the  right  way,  may  be  counted  on  as 
friendly,  but  rather  appear  in  many  cases  to  be  precautions 
against  the  approach  of  malignant  enemies — against  contact 
with  evil  spirits,  and  the  like.  Thus  alongside  of  taboos 
that  exactly  correspond  to  rules  of  holiness,  protecting  the 
inviolability  of  idols  and  sanctuaries,  priests  and  chiefs,  and 
generally  of  all  persons  and  things  pertaining  to  the  gods 
and  their  worship,  we  find  another  kind  of  taboo  which  in 
the  Semitic  field  has  its  parallel  in  rules  of  un cleanness. 
Women  after  child-birth,  men  who  have  touched  a  dead 
body  and  so  forth,  are  temporarily  taboo  and  separated  from 
human  society,  just  as  the  same  persons  are  unclean  in 
Semitic  religion.  In  these  cases  the  person  under  taboo  is 
not  regarded  as  holy,  for  he  is  separated  from  approach  to 
the  sanctuary  as  well  as  from  contact  with  men ;  but  his 

'  Sometimes  by  civil  penalties  also.  For  in  virtue  of  its  solidarity  the 
whole  community  is  compromised  by  the  impiety  of  any  one  of  its  members, 
and  is  concerned  to  purge  away  the  offence. 

-  A  good  account  of  taboo,  with  references  to  the  best  sources  of  informa- 
tion on  the  subject,  is  given  by  Mr.  J.  G.  Frazer  in  the  9th  ed.  of  the 
Encyc.  Britan.  vol.  xxiii.  p.  15  sqq. 


LECT.  IV.  TABOO.  143 

act  or  condition  is  somehow  associated  with  supernatural 
dangers,  arising,  according  to  the  common  savage  explanation, 
from  the  presence  of  formidable  spirits,  which  are  shunned 
like  an  infectious  disease.  In  most  savage  societies  no 
sharp  line  seems  to  be  drawn  between  the  two  kinds  of 
taboo  just  indicated,  and  even  in  more  advanced  nations  the 
notions  of  holiness  and  uncleanness  often  touch.  Among 
the  Syrians  for  example  swine's  flesh  was  taboo,  but  it  was 
an  open  question  whether  this  was  because  the  animal  was 
holy  or  because  it  was  unclean.^  But  though  not  precise, 
the  distinction  between  what  is  holy  and  what  is  unclean 
is  real ;  in  rules  of  holiness  the  motive  is  respect  for  the 
gods,  in  rules  of  uncleanness  it  is  primarily  fear  of  an 
unknown  or  hostile  power,  though  ultimately,  as  we  see  in 
the  Levitical  legislation,  the  law  of  clean  and  unclean  may 
be  brought  within  the  sphere  of  divine  ordinances,  on  the 
view  tliat  uncleanness  is  hateful  to  God  and  must  be 
avoided  by  all  that  have  to  do  with  Him. 

The  fact  that  all  the  Semites  have  rules  of  uncleanness 
as  well  as  rules  of  holiness,  that  the  boundary  between  the 
two  is  often  vague,  and  that  the  former  as  well  as  the 
latter  present  the  most  startling  agreement  in  point  of 
detail  with  savage  taboos^  leaves  no  reasonable  doubt  as 
to  the  origin  and  ultimate  relations  of  the  idea  of  holiness. 
On  the  other  hand  the  fact  that  the  Semites — or  at  least 
the  northern  Semites — distinguish  between  the  holy  and  the 
unclean,  marks  a  real  advance  above  savagery.  All  taboos 
are  inspired  by  awe  of  the  supernatural,  but  there  is  a 
great  moral  difference  between  precautions  against  the 
invasion  of  mysterious  hostile  powers  and  precautions 
founded  on  respect  for  the  prerogative  of  a  friendly  god. 

^  Lucian,  Dca  Si/r.  liv.;  cf.  Autiphanes  ap.  Atlieu.  iii.  p.  95  [Mcineko, 
Fr.  Com.  Or.  iii.  (jS]. 
-  See  AdditioniU  Xott  C,  Holiness,  Uncleanness,  and  Taboo. 


144  THE    LIMITS    OF 


LECT.   IV. 


The  former  belong  to  magiccal  superstition — the  barrenest 
of  all  aberrations  of  the  savage  imagination — which,  being 
founded  only  on  fear,  acts  merely  as  a  bar  to  progress  and 
an  impediment  to  the  free  use  of  nature  by  human  energy 
and  industry.  But  the  restrictions  on  individual  licence 
which  are  due  to  respect  for  a  known  and  friendly  power 
allied  to  man,  however  trivial  and  absurd  they  may  appear 
to  us  in  their  details,  contain  within  them  germinant 
principles  of  social  progress  and  moral  order.  To  know 
that  one  has  the  mysterious  powers  of  nature  on  one's  side 
so  long  as  one  acts  in  conformity  with  certain  rules,  gives 
a  man  strength  and  courage  to  pursue  the  task  of  the 
subjugation  of  nature  to  his  service.  To  restrain  one's 
individual  licence,  not  out  of  slavish  fear,  but  from  respect 
for  a  higher  and  beneficent  power,  is  a  moral  discipline  of 
which  the  value  does  not  altogether  depend  on  the  reason- 
ableness of  the  sacred  restrictions :  a  modern  schoolboy  is 
subject  to  many  unreasonable  taboos,  which  are  not  without 
value  in  the  formation  of  character.  But  finally,  and 
above  all,  the  very  association  of  the  idea  of  holiness  with 
a  beneficent  deity,  whose  own  interests  are  bound  up  with 
the  interests  of  the  community,  makes  it  inevitable  that  the 
laws  of  social  and  moral  order,  as  well  as  mere  external 
precepts  of  physical  observance,  shall  be  placed  under  the 
sanction  of  the  god  of  the  comnmnity.  Breaches  of  social 
order  are  recognised  as  offences  against  the  holiness  of  the 
deity,  and  the  development  of  law  and  morals  is  made 
possible,  at  a  stage  when  human  sanctions  are  still  wanting, 
or  too  imperfectly  administered  to  have  much  power,  by 
the  belief  that  the  restrictions  on  human  licence  which 
are  necessary  to  social  well-being  are  conditions  imposed 
by  the  god  for  the  maintenance  of  a  good  understanding 
between  himself  and  his  worshippers. 

As   every  sanctuary  was    protected    by  rigid  taboos  it 


LECT.  IV.  THE   SANCTUARY.  145 

was  important  that  its  site  and  limits  should  be  clearly 
marked.     From  the  account  already  given  of  the  origin  of 
holy  places,  it  follows  that  in  very  many  cases  the  natural 
features  of  the  spot  were  suflioient  to  distinguish  it.     A 
fountain  with  its  margin   of    rich  vegetation,  a  covert  of 
jungle  haunted  by  lions,  a  shaggy  glade  on  the  mountain- 
side,  a   solitary    eminence   rising   from   the    desert,  where 
toppling    blocks    of   weather-beaten  granite  concealed  the 
dens  of  the  hy?ena  and  the  bear,  needed  only  the  support 
of  tradition  to  bear  witness  for  themselves  to  tlieir  own 
sanctity.     In  such  cases  it  was  natural  to  draw  the  border 
of    the   holy  ground   somewhat  widely,  and   to   allow  an 
ample  verge  on  all  sides  of  the  sacred  centre.      In  Araliia, 
as  we  have  seen,  the  hima  sometimes  enclosed  a  great  tract 
of  pasture  land  roughly  marked  off'  by  pillars  or  cairns, 
and  the  haram  or  sacred  territory  of  Mecca  extends  for 
some    hours'  journey   on   almost   every    side   of   the  city. 
The  whole  mountain  of  Horeb  was  sacred  ground,  and  so 
probably  was  Mount  Hermon,  for  its  name  means  "  holy," 
and  the  summit  and  slopes  still  bear  the  ruins  of  many 
temples.^      In    like    manner    Eenan    concludes    from    the 
multitude    of    sacred    remains    along    the    course    of    the 
Adonis,   in    the    Lebanon,   that    the   whole   valley    was   a 
kind  of  sacred  territory  of  the  god  from  whom  the  river 
had    its    name."       In    a    cultivated    and    thickly   peopled 
land  it  was  difficult  to  maintain  a  rigid  rule  of  sanctity 
over    a    wide    area,    and    strict    taboos    were     necessarily 
limited   to   the    temples   and  their   immediate    enclosures, 
while   in   a   looser   sense   the  whole  city  or   land   of   the 
god's  worshippers  was  held   to  be   the  god's  land   and   to 
participate   in   his   holiness.      Yet   some   remains    of    the 
old   sanctity  of    whole  regions  survived  even  in  Syria  to 

^  For  the  sanctity  of  Hermon  see  further  RelanJ,  Palcestina,  \>.  323. 
-  Renan,  Jiliisision  de  Phiniclt  (1864),  p.  295. 

K 


146  THE   JEALOUSY  lect.  iv. 

a  late  date.  lamblichus,  in  the  last  days  of  heathenism, 
still  speaks  of  Mount  Carmel  as  "  sacred  above  all 
mountains  and  forbidden  of  access  to  the  vulgar,"  and 
here  Vespasian  worshipped  at  the  solitary  altar,  embowered 
in  inviolable  thickets,  to  which  ancient  tradition  forbade 
the  adjuncts  of  temple  and  image.^ 

The  taboos  or  restrictions  applicable  within  the  wide 
limits  of  these  greater  sacred  tracts  have  already  been 
touched  upon.  The  most  universal  of  them  was  that  men 
were  not  allowed  to  interfere  with  the  natural  life  of  the 
spot.  No  blood  might  be  shed  and  no  tree  cut  down ; 
an  obvious  rule  whether  these  livins"  thinG;s  are  resrarded 
as  the  protected  associates  of  the  god,  or  —  as  was 
perhaps  the  earlier  conception — as  participating  in  the 
divine  life.  In  some  cases  all  access  to  the  Arabian 
himCi  was  forbidden,  as  at  the  sacred  tract  marked  off 
round  the  grave  of  Ibn  Tofail.^  For  with  the  Arabs 
grave  and  sanctuary  were  kindred  ideas,  the  grave  of 
Kolaib-Wail  was  shewn  in  a  corner  of  the  hima  of 
Darlya,  and  famous  chiefs  and  heroes  were  honoured 
by    the    consecration    of    their    resting  -  place.^      But    an 

'  lambliclms,  Vit.  Pyth.  iii.  (15)  ;  Tacitus,  Hid.  ii.  78.  From  1  Kings 
xviii.  it  would  be  clear,  apart  from  the  classical  testimonies,  that  Carmel 
was  a  sacred  mountain  of  the  Phoenicians.  It  had  also  an  altar  of  Jehovah, 
and  this  made  it  the  fit  place  for  the  contest  between  Jehovah -worship  and 
Baal-worship.  Carmel  is  still  clothed  with  thickets  (Conder,  Tvnt-work, 
i.  172)  as  it  was  in  old  Testament  times  (Amos  i.  2 ;  Mic.  vii.  14 ; 
Cant.  vii.  5),  and  Amos  ix.  3,  Mic.  vii.  14,  where  its  woods  appear  as  a 
place  of  refuge,  do  not  receive  their  full  force  till  we  combine  them  with 
lamblichus's  notice  that  the  mountain  was  an  ajiaroM,  where  the  flocks, 
driven  up  into  the  forest  in  autumn  to  feed  on  the  leaves  (as  is  still  done, 
Thomson,  Land  and  Book  [\i^Q],  pp.  204  nq.,  485),  were  inviolable,  and  where 
the  fugitive  found  a  sure  asylum.  The  sanctity  of  Carmel  is  even  now 
not  extinct,  and  the  scene  at  the  Festival  of  Elijah,  described  by  Seetzen, 
ii.  96  .s(/.,  is  exactly  like  an  old  Canaanite  feast. 

2  Acjh.  XV.  139  ;  Wellh.,  p.  163. 

^  Yacut,  ii.  343,  1.  15.  This  is  not  the  place  to  go  into  the  general  question 
of  the  worship  of  ancestors.  See  Wellhausen,  ut  suj/ra  ;  Goldziher,  Culte  dtn 
Ancetrts  chez  les  Arahes  (?&\h,  1885),  and  3Iuli.  Studien,  p.  229  sqq.  ;  and 


LKCT.  IV.  OF    THE    GOD.  147 

absolute  exclusion  of  liuman  visitors,  while  not  unin- 
telligible at  a  tomb,  could  hardly  be  maintained  at  a 
sanctuary  which  contained  a  place  of  worship,  and 
we  have  seen  that  some  himds  were  open  pastures, 
wliile  the  haram  at  Mecca  even  contained  a  large 
permanent  population.^  The  tendency  was  evidently 
to  a  gradual  relaxation  of  burdensome  restrictions,  not 
necessarily  because  religious  reverence  declined,  but  from 
an  increasing  confidence  that  the  god  was  liis  servants' 
well-wisher  and  did  not  press  his  prerogative  unduly. 
Yet  the  "  jealousy "  of  the  deity — an  idea  familiar  to 
us  from  the  Old  Testament — was  never  lost  sight  of  in 
Semitic  worship.  In  the  higher  forms  of  religion  this 
quality,  which  nearly  corresponds  to  self-respect  and  the- 
sense  of  personal  dignity  in  a  man,  readily  lent  itself 
to  an  ethical  interpretation,  so  that  the  jealousy  of  the 
deity  was  mainly  conceived  to  be  indignation  against  wrong- 
doing, as  an  offence  against  the  honour  of  the  divine 
sovereign ; "  but  in  savage  times  the  personal  dignity  of 
the  god,  like  that  of  a  great  chief,  asserts  itself  mainly 
in  punctilious  insistence  on  a  complicated  etiquette  that 

some  remarks,  perhaps  too  sceptical,  in  my  Kinship,  p.  18  nnq.  The  matter 
will  come  up  again  at  a  later  point  of  these  lectures. 

^  YiVut,  iii.  790  (cf.  "WcUh.,  p.  102),  says  that  marks,  called  "  scarecrows  " 
{ahh'ila),  were  set  up  to  show  tliat  a  place  was  a  himd,  and  must  not  be 
approached.  But  to  "  approach  "  a  forbidden  thing  {cariha)  is  the  general 
word  for  violating  a  taboo,  so  the  expression  ought  not  ]icr]iaps  to  be  ])rpss((l 
too  closely.  The  Greek  afiarov  is  also  used  simply  in  the  sense  of  inviolabh; 
(along  witli  eiffuXov).  It  is  notable,  however,  that  in  the  same  passage 
Yacut  tells  us  that  two  of  the  marks  that  defined  the  himd  of  Faid  were 
called  "the  twin  sacrificial  stones  "  (ghariyiin).  He  did  not  know  the 
ritual  meaning  of  tjharhj,  and  may  therefore  include  them  among  the  akhUa 
by  mere  inadvertence.  But  if  the  place  of  sacrifice  really  stood  on  the 
border  of  the  sacred  ground,  the  inevitable  inference  is  that  tlie  worshippers 
were  not  allowed  to  enter  the  enclosure.  This  would  be  parallel  to  the 
sacrifice  in  Exodus  xxiv.  4,  where  he  altar  is  built  outside  the  limits  of 
Sinai,  and  the  people  are  not  allowed  to  approach  the  mountain. 

-  This,  it  will  be  remembered,  is  the  idea  on  which  Anselui's  theory  of  the 
atonement  is  based. 


148  THE   JEALOQSY 


LECT.   IV. 


surrounds  his  place  and  person.  Naturally  the  strictness 
of  the  etiquette  admits  of  gradations.  When  the  god  and 
his  worshippers  live  side  by  side,  as  in  the  case  of  Mecca, 
or  still  more  in  cases  where  the  idea  of  holiness  has  been 
extended  to  cover  the  whole  land  of  a  particular  religion, 
the  general  laws  of  sacred  observance,  applicable  in  all 
parts  of  the  holy  land,  are  modified  by  practical  con- 
siderations. Strict  taboos  are  limited  to  the  sanctuary 
(in  the  narrower  sense)  or  to  special  seasons  and  occasions, 
such  as  religious  festivals  or  the  time  of  war ;  in  ordinary 
life  necessary  actions  that  constitute  a  breach  of  ceremonial 
holiness  merely  involve  temporary  uncleanness  and  some 
ceremonial  act  of  purification,  or  else  are  condoned  alto- 
gether provided  they  are  done  in  a  particular  way.  Thus 
in  Canaan,  where  the  whole  land  was  holy,  the  hunter  was 
allowed  to  kill  game  if  he  returned  the  life  to  the  god  by 
pouring  it  on  the  ground ;  or  again  the  intercourse  of  the 
sexes,  which  was  strictly  forbidden  at  temples  and  to 
warriors  on  an  expedition,  entailed  in  ordinary  life  only 
a  temporary  impurity,  purged  by  ablution  or  fumigation.^ 
But  in  all  this  care  was  taken  not  to  presume  on  tlie 
prerogative  of  the  gods,  or  trench  without  permission  on 
the  sanctity  of  their  domain ;  and  in  particular,  fresh  en- 
croachments on  untouched  parts  of  nature — the  breaking 
up  of  waste  lands,  the  foundation  of  new  cities,  or  even 
the  annual  cutting  down  of  corn  or  gathering  in  of  the 
vintage — were  not  undertaken  without  special  precautions 
to  propitiate  the  divine  powers.  It  was  felt  that  such 
encroachments  were  not  without  grave  danger,  and  it 
was  often  thought  necessary  to  accompany  them  with 
expiatory  ceremonies  of  the  most  solemn  kind.^     Within 

^  See  Additional  Xute  D,  Taboos  on  the  Intercourse  of  the  Sexex. 
2  The  details,  so  far  as  they  are  concerned  Mitli  the  j'early  recurring  ritual 
of  harvest  and.  vintage,  belong  to  the  sulgect  of  Agricultural  Feasts,  and  must/ 


LECT.    IV. 


OF    THE    GOD.  149 


the  god's  holy  land  all  parts  of  life  are  regulated  with 
constant  regard  to  his  sanctity,  and  so  among  the  settled 
Semites,  who  lived  on  Baal's  ground,  religion  entered  far 
more  deeply  into  common  life  than  was  the  case  among 
the  Arabs,  where  only  special  tracts  were  consecrated  land 
and  the  wide  desert  was  as  yet  unclaimed  either  by  gods 
or  by  men, 

be  reserved  for  a  future  course  of  lectures.  Tlie  danger  connected  with  the 
breaking  up  of  waste  lands  is  illustrated  for  Arabia  by  the  story  of  Harb  and 
Mirdiis  {supra,  p.  125).  Here  the  danger  still  comes  from  the  jinnof  the 
place,  but  even  where  the  whole  land  already  lielongs  to  a  friendly  deity, 
])recautions  are  necessary  when  man  lays  his  hand  for  the  first  time  on  any 
of  the  good  things  of  nature.  Thus  the  Hebrews  ate  the  fruit  of  new  trees 
only  in  the  fifth  year  ;  in  the  fourth  year  the  fruit  was  consecrated  to 
Jehovah,  but  the  produce  of  the  first  three  years  was  "unoircumcised," 
i.e.  taboo,  and  might  not  be  eaten  at  all  (Lev.  xix.  23  sqq.).  A  similar 
idea  underlies  the  Syrian  traditions  of  human  sacrifice  at  the  foundation  of 
cities  (llalalas,  Bonn  ed.,  pp.  37,  200,  203),  which  are  not  the  less  instructive 
that  they  are  not  historical!}'  true. 


LECTUEE   V. 

SANCTUARIES,    NATURAL    AND    ARTIFICIAL.       HOLY    WATERS, 
TREES,    CAVES,    AND    STONES. 

We  have  seen  that  hohness  admits  of  degrees,  and  that 
within  a  sacred  land  or  tract  it  is  natural  to  mark  off  an 
inner  circle  of  intenser  holiness,  where  all  ritual  restrictions 
are  stringently  enforced,  and  where  man  feels  himself  to  be 
nearer  to  his  god  than  on  other  parts  even  of  holy  ground. 
Such  a  spot  of  intenser  holiness  becomes  the  sanctuary  or 
place  of  sacrifice,  where  the  worshipper  approaches  the  god 
with  prayers  and  gifts,  and  seeks  guidance  for  life  from 
the  divine  oracle.  As  holy  tracts  in  general  are  the 
regions  haunted  by  divine  powers,  so  the  site  of  the 
sanctuary  'par  excellence,  or  place  of  worship,  is  a  spot  where 
the  god  is  constantly  present  in  some  visible  embodiment, 
or  which  has  received  a  special  consecration  by  some 
extraordinary  manifestation  of  deity.  Eor  the  more  de- 
veloped forms  of  cultus  a  mere  vague  Imnci  does  not 
suffice ;  men  require  a  special  point  at  which  they  may 
come  together  and  do  sacrifice  with  the  assurance  that 
the  god  is  present  at  the  act.  In  Arabia,  indeed,  it  seems 
to  be  not  improbable  that  certain  sacrifices  were  laid  on 
sacred  ground  to  be  devoured  by  wild  beasts.  For  such 
worship  perhaps  it  was  not  necessary  to  come  face  to  face 
with  a  definite  symbol  of  the  divine  presence,  inasmuch  as 
the  beasts  received  the  offering  on  his  behalf.  But  a 
sacrifice  directed  to  the  sacred  beasts  and  not  first  pre- 

150 


LKCT.  V.  HOLY   SYMBOLS.  151 

sented  to  the  individual  god  can  hardly  be  understood 
unless  the  beasts  themselves  are  divine,  in  otlier  words  it 
belongs  to  a  religion  not  yet  differentiated  from  totemism.* 
Even  in  Arabia  the  himd  usually,  probably  always,  con- 
tained a  fixed  point  where  the  blood  of  the  offering  was 
directly  presented  to  the  deity  by  being  applied  to  sacred 
stones,  or  where  a  sacred  tree  was  hung  with  gifts.  In 
the  ordinary  forms  of  heathenism,  at  any  rate,  it  was 
essential  that  the  worshipper  should  bring  his  offering 
into  the  actual  presence  of  the  god,  or  into  contact  with 
the  symbol  of  that  presence.^ 

The  symbol  or  permanent  visible  object,  at  and  through 
which  the  worshipper  came  into  direct  contact  with  the 
god,  was  not  lacking  in  any  Semitic  place  of  worship,  but 
had  not  always  the  same  form,  and  was  sometimes  a 
natural  object,  sometimes  an  artificial  erection.  The  usual 
natural  symbols  are  a  fountain  or  a  tree,  while  the 
ordinary  artificial  symbol  is  a  pillar  or  pile  of  stones ; 
Init  very  often  all  three  are  found  together,  and  this  was 
the  rule  in  the  more  developed  sanctuaries,  particular 
sacred  observances  being  connected  with  each. 

The  choice  of  the  natural  symbols,  the  fountain  and 
the  tree,  is  no  doubt  due  in  part  to  the  fact  that  the 
favourite  haunts  of  animate  life,  to  which  a  superstitious 
reverence  was  attached,  are  mainly  found  beside  wood  and 
running  water.  But  besides  this  we  have  found  evidence 
of  the  direct  ascription  to  trees  and  living  waters  of  a  life 
analogous  to  man's,  but  mysterious  and  therefore  awful.' 

^  The  thing  is  not  on  this  account  incredible  or  without  parallel  in  the 
religions  of  the  higher  races,  e.g.  the  Egyptians. 

-  This  rule  is  observed  even   when   tlie  god   is  a  heavenly  body.     The 
sacrifices  of  the  Saracens  to  the  morning  star,  described  by  Nilus,  were  cele- 
brated when  that  star  rose,  and  could  not  be  made  after  it  was  lost  to  sight 
on  the  rising  of  the  sun  {Nili  op.  qumlam,  [Paris,  1639],  pp.  28,  117). 
'  Supra,  p.  126  sqq. 


152  SACRED    FOUNTAINS  LECT.  v. 

To  US  this  may  seem  to  be  quite  another  point  of  view  ; 
in  the  one  case  the  fountain  or  the  tree  merely  mark  the 
spot  which  the  deity  frequents,  in  the  other  they  are 
the  visible  embodiments  of  the  divine  presence.  But  the 
primitive  imagination  has  no  difficulty  in  combining  differ- 
ent ideas  about  the  same  holy  place  or  thing.  The  gods 
are  not  tied  to  one  form  of  embodiment  or  manifestation ; 
for,  as  has  already  been  observed,^  some  sort  of  distinction 
between  life  and  the  material  embodiment  of  life  is  sug- 
gested to  the  rudest  peoples  by  phenomena  like  those  of 
dreams.  Even  men,  it  is  supposed,  can  change  their 
embodiment,  and  assume  for  a  time  the  shape  of  wolves  or 
birds  ; "  and  of  course  the  gods  with  their  superior  powers 
have  a  still  greater  range,  and  the  same  deity  may  quite 
well  manifest  himself  in  the  life  of  a  tree  or  a  spring,  and 
yet  emerge  from  time  to  time  in  human  or  animal  form. 
All  manifestations  of  life  at  or  about  a  holy  place  readily 
assume  a  divine  character  and  form  a  religious  unity, 
contributing  as  they  do  to  create  and  nourish  the  same 
religious  emotion ;  and  in  all  of  them  the  godhead  is  felt 
to  be  present  in  the  same  direct  way.  The  permanent 
manifestations  of  his  presence,  however,  the  sacred  fountain 
and  the  sacred  tree,  are  likely  to  hold  the  first  place  in 
acts  of  worship,  simply  because  they  are  permanent  and  so 
attach  to  themselves  a  fixed  sacred  tradition.  These  con- 
siderations apply  equally  to  the  sanctuaries  of  nomadic 
and  of  settled  peoples,  but  among  the  latter  the  religious 
importance  of  water  and  wood  could  not  fail  to  be  greatly 
reinforced  by  the  growth  of  the  ideas  of  Baal-worship,  in 
which  the  deity  as  the  giver  of  life  is  specially  connected 
with  quickening  waters  and  vegetative  growth. 

With  this  it  agrees  that  sacred  wells,  in  connection  with 
sanctuaries,  are  found  in  all  parts  of  the  Semitic  area,  but 

1  Svpra,  p.  85,  -  Supra,  p.  86. 


LECT.  V.  IN    ARABIA.  153 

are  mucli  less  prominent  among  the  nomadic  Arabs  than 
among  tlie  agricultural  peoples  of  Syria  and  Palestine. 
There  is  mention  of  fountains  or  streams  at  a  good  many 
Arabian  sanctuaries,  but  little  direct  evidence  that  these 
M-aters  were  holy,  or  played  any  definite  part  in  the  ritual. 
The  clearest  case  is  that  of  Mecca,  where  the  holiness  of 
the  well  Zamzam  is  certainly  pre-Islamic.  It  would  even 
seem  that  in  old  time  gifts  were  cast  into  it,  as  they  were 
cast  into  the  sacred  wells  of  the  northern  Semites.^  Some 
kind  of  ritual  holiness  seems  also  to  have  attached  to  the 
pool  beneath  a  waterfall  at  the  Dausite  sanctuary  of 
Dusares.^  Again,  as  healing  springs  and  sacred  springs  are 
everywhere  identified,  it  is  noteworthy  that  the  Arabs  still 
regard  medicinal  waters  as  inhabited  by  jinn,  usually  of 
serpent  form,^  and  that  the  water  of  the  sanctuary  at 
the  Palmetum  was  thought  to  be  health-giving,  and  was 
carried  home  by  pilgrims  *  as  Zamzam  water  now  is.  In 
like  manner  the  custom  of  pilgrims  carrying  away  water 
from  the  well  of  'Orwa^  is   probably  a  relic  of   ancient 

'  So  Welllianscn,  p.  101,  concludes  ■with  probability  fi'om  tlie  story  that 
wlien  the  well  was  rediscovered  and  cleaned  out  by  the  grandfather  of 
Mohammed,  two  golden  gazelles  and  a  number  of  swords  were  found  in  it. 
Everything  told  of  the  prophet's  ancestors  must  be  received  with  caution, 
but  this  does  not  look  like  invention.  The  two  golden  gazelles  are  parallel 
to  the  golden  camels  of  Saba?an  and  Nabatajan  inscriptions  {ZDMO.  xx.xviii. 

143  S7.)- 

^  Ibn  Hishiim,  p.  253  ;  Wellhausen,  p.  4.'").  A  woman  who  adopts  Islam 
breaks  with  the  heatlien  god  by  "purifying  herself"  in  this  pool.  This 
implies  tliat  her  act  was  a  breach  of  tlie  ritual  of  the  spot ;  })ersumably 
a  woman  who  required  purification  (viz.  from  her  courses)  was  not  ad- 
mitted to  the  sacred  water;  cf.  Yacut,  i.  657,  1.  2  sqq.,  and  especially 
iv.  651,  1.  4  sqq.  (Manaf).  This  explanation  is  favoured  Iiy  the  fact  that  in  the 
same  tradition  a  man  who  accepts  Islam  is  also  ortlered  to  perform  a 
ceremonial  ablution,  but  is  not  sent  to  the  sacred  water.  Under  ordinary 
circumstances  to  bathe  in  the  sacred  spring  would  be  an  act  of  homage  to 
the  heathen  god  :  so  at  least  it  was  in  Syria.  Tlie  waters  called  Thorayya 
(Pleiades)  in  the  hima  of  Dariya  (Yacut,  i.  924,  iii.  58S  ;  Bakri,  pp.  214,  627) 
probably  were  a  group  of  seven  sacred  wells  :  see  below. 

'  Mordtmann  in  ZDMG.  xx.xviii.  587. 

*  Agatharchides  ap.  Diod.  Sic.  iii.  43.       *  Yacut,  i.  434  ;  Cazwini,  i.  200. 


154  SACRED  WATERS  OF  lect.  v. 

sanctity.  Further,  on  the  borders  of  the  Arabian  field,  we 
have  the  sacred  fountain  of  Ephca  at  Palmyra,  with  which 
a  legend  of  a  demon  in  serpent  form  is  still  connected. 
This  is  a  sulphurous  spring,  which  had  a  guardian 
appointed  by  the  god  Yarhibol,  and  on  an  inscription 
is  called  the  "  blessed  fountain."  ^  Again,  in  the  desert 
beyond  Bostra,  we  find  the  Stygian  waters,  where  a  great 
cleft  received  a  lofty  cataract.  The  waters  had  the  power 
to  swallow  up  or  cast  forth  the  gifts  flung  into  them,  as  a 
sign  that  the  god  was  or  was  not  propitious,  and  the  oath 
by  the  spot  and  its  stream  was  the  most  terrible  known 
to  the  inhabitants  of  the  region.^  The  last  two  cases 
belong  to  a  region  in  which  religion  was  not  purely 
Arabian  in  character,  but  the  Stygian  waters  recall  the 
waterfall  in  the  Dausite  sanctuary  of  Dusares,  and 
Ptolemy  twice  mentions  a  Stygian  fountain  in  Arabia 
proper. 

Among  the  northern  Semites,  the  agricultural  Canaanites 
and  Syrians,  sacred  waters  hold  a  much  more  prominent 
place.  Where  all  ground  watered  by  fountains  and  streams, 
without  the  aid  of  man's  hand,  was  regarded  as  the  Baal's 
land,  a  certain  sanctity  could  hardly  fail  to  be  ascribed  to 
every  source  of  living  water ;  and  where  the  divine 
activity  was  looked  upon  as  mainly  displaying  itself  in 
the  quickening  of  the  soil,  the  waters  which  gave  fertility 
to  the  land,  and  so  life  to  its  inhabitants,  would  appear 
to  be  the  direct  embodiment  of  divine  energies.  Accord- 
ingly we  find  that  Hannibal,  in  his  covenant  with  Philip 
of  Macedon,  when  he  swears  before  all  the  deities  of 
Carthage  and  of  Hellas,  includes  among  the  divine  powers 
to  which  his  oath  appeals  "the  sun  the  moon  and  the 
earth,  rivers  meadows  and  waters."  ^     Thus  when  we  find 

1  Wadd.,  No.  2571r  ;  De  Vog.,  No.  95. 

2  Dainascius,  Vita  Iddori,  §  199.  '  Polybius,  vii.  9. 


LECT.  V.  THK    PHCENICIANS.  155 

that  temples  were  so  often  erected  near  springs  and  rivers, 
we  must  consider  not  only  that  such  a  position  was 
convenient,  inasmuch  as  pure  water  was  indispensable 
for  ablutions  and  other  ritual  purposes,  but  that  the 
presence  of  living  water  in  itself  gave  consecration  to 
the  place/  The  fountain  or  stream  was  not  a  mere 
adjunct  to  the  temple,  Init  was  itself  one  of  the  principal 
sacra  of  the  spot,  to  which  special  legends  and  a  special 
ritual  were  often  attached,  and  to  which  the  temple  in 
many  instances  owed  its  celebrity  and  even  its  name. 
This  is  particularly  the  case  with  perennial  streams  and 
their  sources,  which  in  a  country  like  Palestine,  where 
rain  is  confined  to  the  winter  months,  are  not  very 
numerous,  and  form  striking  features  in  the  topography 
of  the  region.  From  Hannibal's  oath  we  may  conclude 
that  among  the  I'hoenicians  and  Carthaginians  all  such 
waters  were  held  to  be  divine,  and  what  we  know  in 
detail  of  the  waters  of  the  Phoenician  coast  goes  far  to 
confirm  the  conclusion.''  Of  the  eminent  sanctity  of 
certain  rivers,  such  as  the  Belus  and  the  Adonis,  we  have 
direct  evidence,  and  the  grove  and  pool  of  Aphaca  at  the 
source  of  the  latter  stream  was  the  most  famous  of  all 
Phoenician  holy  places.^  These  rivers  arc  named  from 
gods,  and  so  also,  on  the  same  coast,  are  the  Asclepius, 
near  Sidon,  the  Ares  (perhaps  identical  with  the  Lycus) 
and  presumably  the  Kishon.^  In  like  manner  the 
Leontes,  or  Lion  Ptiver,  probably  derives  its  name  from 
the  "  ancestral  god,"  who  was  worshipped  under  the  form 

^  For  the  choice  of  a  phice  beside  a  pool  as  the  site  of  a  chapel,  seo 

Waddington,  No.  2015,  ilrifiini  t'oitoi  outos  «'v  skt/itiv  iyyuit  Xlftvn;. 

-The  authorities  for  the  details,  so  far  as  they  are  not  cited  below,  will  be 
found  in  Baudissin,  Studien,  ii.  161. 

'  Euseb. ,  Vit.  Const,  iii.  55;  Sozomen,  ii.  5. 

*  River  of  t^p,  Ar.  Cais.  Prof.  De  Goeje,  referring  to  Hamdanl,  p.  3,  1.  9, 
and  perhaps  p.  221,  1.  14,  suggests  to  me  by  letter  that  Cais  is  a  title, 
'■  doiuinus." 


lo6  SACRED    WATERS  lect.  v. 

of  a  lion  at  the  great  temple  of  Heliopolis  or  Baalbek, 
wliich  stands  at  the  true  source  of  the  river.-^  The  river 
of  Tripolis,  which  descends  from  the  famous  cedars,  is 
still  called  the  Cadlsha  or  holy  stream,  and  the  grove  at 
its  source  is  sacred  to  Christians  and  Moslems  alike.^ 

In  Hellenic  and  Eoman  times  the  source  of  the  Jordan 
at  Paneas  with  its  grotto  was  sacred  to  Pan,  and  in 
ancient  days  the  great  Israelite  sanctuary  of  Dan  occupied 
the  same  site.  It  is  evident  that  Naaman's  indinnation 
when  he  was  told  to  bathe  in  the  Jordan,  and  his  con- 
fidence that  the  rivers  of  Damascus  were  better  than  all 
the  waters  of  Israel,  sprang  from  the  idea  that  the  Jordan 
was  the  sacred  healing  stream  of  the  Hebrews,  as  Abana 
and  Pharphar  were  the  sacred  rivers  of  the  Syrians,  and 
in  this  he  probably  did  no  injustice  to  the  belief  of  the 
mass  of  the  Israelites.  The  sanctity  of  the  Barada,  the 
chief  river  of  Damascus,  was  concentrated  at  its  nominal 
source,  the  fountain  of  El-Fiji,  that  is,  irrjyaL  The  river- 
gods  Chrysorrhoa  and  Pegai  often  appear  on  Damascene 
coins,  and  evidently  had  a  great  part  in  the  religion  of 
the  city. 

The  river  of  Coele-Syria,  the  Orontes,  was  carved  out, 
according  to  local  tradition,  by  a  great  dragon,  which 
disappeared  in  the  earth  at  its  source.^     The  connection 

1  Damascius,  Vit.  I.sid.  §  203.  That  the  fountains  of  Heliopolis,  though 
now  spent  in  irrigation,  are  the  true  source  of  the  Leontes  appears  from 
Robinson,  Bib.  Ren.  iii.  506.  It  is  noteworthy  in  this  connection  that  the 
old  name  of  Dan,  at  the  source  of  the  Jordan,  is  Laish,  "  Lion,"  and  that 
a  chief  source  of  the  Orontes  is  at  a  village  called  Lebwa.  With  the  Lion- 
god  of  Heliopolis  compare  iEsculapins,  "the  Lion-holder,"  at  Ascalon 
(Marinus,  Vita  Prodi,  19).  In  Strabo's  account  of  tlie  Phcenician  coast 
the  grave  of  .(Esculapius  and  tlie  city  of  lions  are  mentioned  together 
(xvi.  2.  22).     Note  also  ^y^-nj  =  X£«vto^oS;«  (Hoffni.,  Ph.  Imchr.  p.  27). 

-Robinson,  iii.  590.  On  Cartliaginian  soil  it  is  not  impos.sible  that  the 
Bagi-adas  or  Majerda,  Macaros  or  Macros  in  MSS.  of  Polybius,  bears  the 
name  of  the  Tyrian  Baal-Melcarth. 

■*  Strabo,  xvi.  2.  7.  Other  sacred  traditions  about  the  Orontes  are  given 
by  Malalas,  p.  38,  from  Pausanias  of  Damascus. 


LECT.  V. 


OF   SYRIA.  157 


of  jinn  in  the  form  of  dragons  or  serpents  with  sacred  or 
heaHng  springs  has  ah-eady  come  before  us  in  Ara1)ian 
superstition,  and  tlie  lake  of  Cadas  near  Eniesa,  which  is 
regarded  as  the  source  of  the  river  (Yacut,  iii.  588)  bears 
a  name  which  implies  its  ancient  sanctity.  Among  Syrian 
waters  those  of  the  Euphrates  played  an  important  part  in 
the  ritual  of  Hierapolis,  and  from  them  the  great  goddess 
was  thought  to  have  been  born  ;  while  the  source  of  its 
chief  Mesopotamian  tributary,  the  Aborrhas  or  Chaboras, 
was  reverenced  as  the  place  where  Hera  (Atargatis)  bathed 
after  her  marriage  with  Zeus  (Bel).  It  gave  out  a  sweet 
odour,  and  was  full  of  tame,  that  is  sacred,  fishes.^ 

The  sacredness  of  living  waters  was  by  no  means 
confined  to  such  great  streams  and  sources  as  have  just 
been  spoken  of.  But  in  cultivated  districts  fountains 
could  not  ordinarily  be  reserved  for  purposes  exclusively 
sacred.  Each  town  or  village  had  as  a  rule  its  own  well, 
and  its  own  high  place  or  little  temple,  but  in  Canaan  the 
well  was  not  generally  within  the  precincts  of  the  high 
place.  Towns  were  built  on  rising  ground,  and  the  well 
lay  outside  the  gate,  usually  below  the  town,  while  the 
high  place  stood  on  the  higher  ground  overlooking  the 
human  habitations.^  Thus  any  idea  of-  sanctity  that  might 
be  connected  with  the  fountain  was  dissociated  from  the 
temple  ritual,  and  would  necessarily  become  vague  and 
attenuated.^     Sacred  springs  in  the  full  sense  of  the  word 


1  iElian,  Nat.  An.  xii.  30  ;  riiiiy,  //.  K.  xx.\i.  37,  xxxii.  16. 

-  Gen.  xxiv.  11  ;  1  Sam.  ix.  11  ;  2  Sam.  ii.  13,  xxiii.  IG  ;  2  Kings  ii.  21  ; 
1  Kings  xxi.  13,  19,  compared  with  cliap.  xxii.  38. 

3  There  are,  however,  indications  tliat  in  some  cases  the  original  sanctuary 
was  at  a  well  beneath  the  town.  In  1  Kings  i.  9,  38,  the  fountains  of  En- 
rogel,  where  Adonijah  held  liis  sacrilicial  least,  and  of  Gihon,  where  Solomon 
was  crowned,  are  plainly  the  original  sanctuaries  of  Jerusalem.  The  former 
was  by  the  "serpent's  stone,"  and  may  perhaps  be  identified  with  the 
"  drngon  well"  of  Neh.  ii.  13.  Here  again,  as  in  Arabia  and  at  the  Orontes, 
the  dragon  or  serpent  has  a  sacred  significance. 


158  LEGENDS    ABOUT  lect.  v. 

are  generally  found,  not  at  the  ordinary  local  sanctuaries, 
but  at  remote  pilgrimage  shrines  like  Aphaca,  Beersheba, 
Mamre,  or  within  the  enclosure  of  great  and  spacious 
temples  like  that  at  Ascalon,  where  the  pool  of  Atargatis 
was  shewn  and  her  sacred  fishes  were  fed.  Sometimes,  as 
at  Daphne  near  Antioch,  the  water  and  its  surrounding 
groves  formed  a  sort  of  public  park  near  a  city,  where 
religion  and  pleasure  were  combined  in  the  characteristic 
Syriac  fashion.^ 

The  myths  attached  to  holy  sources  and  streams,  and 
put  forth  to  worshippers  as  accounting  for  their  sanctity, 
were  of  various  types  ;  but  the  practical  beliefs  and  ritual 
usages  connected  with  sacred  waters  were  much  the  same 
everywhere,  and  so  are  plainly  based  on  general  conceptions 
independent  of  the  variations  of  local  story.  The  one 
general  principle  which  runs  througli  all  the  varieties  of 
the  legends,  and  which  also  lies  at  the  basis  of  the  ritual, 
is  that  the  sacred  waters  are  instinct  with  divine  life  and 
energy.  The  legends  explain  this  in  diverse  ways,  and 
bring  the  divine  quality  of  the  waters  into  connection  with 
various  deities  or  supernatural  powers,  but  they  all  agree 
in  this,  that  their  main  object  is  to  explain  how  the  foun- 
tain or  stream  comes  to  be  impregnated,  so  to  speak,  with 
the  vital  energy  of  the  deity  to  which  it  is  sacred. 

Among  the  ancients  Ijlood  is  generally  conceived  as  the 

principle  or  vehicle  of  life,  and  so  the  account  often  given 

of  sacred  waters  is  that  the  blood  of  the  deity  flows  in 

them.      Thus  as  Milton  writes, — 

/•  Smooth  Adonis  from  his  native  rock 
Ean  piTr[)le  to  the  sea,  sujiposed  with  blood 
Of  Thammuz  yearly  wounded.^ 

^  A  similar  example,  Wadd.,  No.  2370.  A  sacred  fountain  of  Eshmun 
"  in  the  mountain  "  seems  to  appear  in  G.  I.  S.  No.  3,  1.  17  ;  of.  G.  Hoti- 
mann,  Ueher  einiye  Phcen.  Intichrr.  p.  52  sq. 

2  Paradise  Lost,  i.  450,  following  Lucian,  Dea  Syria,  viii. 


LECT.  V.  SACRED    WATERS.  159 


The  ruddy  colour  which  the  swollen  river  derived  from 
the  soil  at  a  certain  season  was  ascribed  to  the  blood  of 
the  god  who  received  his  death-wound  in  Lebanon  at  that 
time  of  the  year,  and  lay  buried  beside  the  sacred  source.^ 
Similarly  a  tawny  fountain  near  Joppa  was  thought  to 
derive  its  colour  from  the  blood  of  the  sea-monster  slain 
by  Perseus,"  and  I'hilo  Byblius  says  that  the  fountains  and 
rivers  sacred  to  the  heaven-god  (Baalshamaim)  were  those 
which  received  his  blood  when  he  was  mutilated  by  his 
son.^  In  another  class  of  legends,  specially  connected 
with  the  worship  of  Atargatis,  the  divine  life  of  the  waters 
resides  in  the  sacred  fish  that  inhabit  them.  Atargatis 
and  her  son,  according  to  a  legend  common  to  Hierapolis 
and  Ascalon,  plunged  into  the  waters — in  the  first  case 
the  Euphrates,  in  the  second  the  sacred  pool  at  the  temple 
near  the  town — and  were  changed  into  fishes."*  This  is 
only  another  form  of  the  idea  expressed  in  the  first  class 
of  legend,  where  a  god  dies,  that  is  ceases  to  exist  in 
human  form,  but  his  life  passes  into  the  waters  where  he 
is  buried  ;  and  this  again  is  merely  a  theory  to  bring  the 
divine  water  or  the  divine  fish  into  harmony  with  anthro- 
pomorphic ideas.^     The  same  thing  was  sometimes  effected 

'  Mclito  in  Cureton,  Spic.  Si/r.  p.  25,  1.  7.  Tliat  the  grave  of  Adonis 
was  also  shewn  at  the  mouth  of  the  river  has  been  inferred  from  Den 
Syr.  vi.  vii.  The  river  Buhis  also  had  its  Memnonion  or  Adonis  tomb. 
(Josephus,  B.  J.  ii.  10.  2).  The  reddening  of  the  Adonis  was  observed  by 
Maundrell  on  March  if,  169f. 

2  Tausanias,  iv.  35.  9, 

£  Euseb. ,  Pnep.  Ev.  i.  10,  22  {Fr.  Hut.  Gr.  iii.  568).  The  fountain  of  the  Cha- 
boras,  where  Hera  fiiTo,  tous  yifiou;  .  .  ocriXoutaTa,  belongs  to  the  same  class. 

'  Hyginus,  Astr.  ii.  30;  Manilius,  iv.  580  sqij.;  Xanthus  in  Athenaus, 
viii.  37.  I  have  discussed  these  legends  at  length  in  the  EwjlUh  Hist. 
Review,  April  1887,  to  which  the  reader  is  referred  for  details. 

*  The  idea  that  the  godhead  consecrates  waters  by  descending  into  them 
appears  at  Aphaca  in  a  peculiar  form  associated  with  the  astral  character 
which,  at  least  in  later  times,  was  ascribed  to  the  goddess  Astarte.  It  was 
believed  that  the  goddess  on  a  certain  day  of  the  year  descended  into  the 
river  in  tlie  form  of  a  ficiy  star  from  the  top  of  Lebanon.     So  Sozomen, 


160  LEGENDS    ABOUT  LECT.  V. 

in  another  way  by  saying  that  the  anthropomorphic  deity 
was  born  from  the  water,  as  Aphrodite  sprang  from  the 
sea-foam,  or  as  Atargatis,  in  another  form  of  the  Euphrates 
legend,  given  by  Germanicus  in  his  schoha  on  Aratus,  was 
born  of  an  egg  which  the  sacred  fishes  found  in  the 
Euphrates  and  pushed  ashore.  Here,  we  see,  it  was  left 
to  the  choice  of  the  worshippers  whether  they  would  think 
of  the  deity  as  arising  from  or  disappearing  in  the  water, 
and  in  the  ritual  of  the  Syrian  goddess  at  Hierapolis  both 
ideas  were  combined  at  the  solemn  feasts,  when  her  image 
was  carried  down  to  the  river  and  back  again  to  the 
temple.  Where  the  legend  is  so  elastic  we  can  hardly 
doubt  that  the  sacred  waters  and  sacred  fish  were  wor- 
shipped for  their  own  sake  before  the  anthropomorphic 
goddess  came  into  the  religion,  and  in  fact  the  sacred  fish 
at  the  source  of  the  Chaboras  are  connected  with  an 
altogether  different  myth.  Eish,  as  we  have  seen,  were 
taboo,  and  sacred  fish  were  found  in  rivers  or  in  pools 
at  sanctuaries,  all  over  Syria.^  This  superstition  has 
proved  one  of  the  most  durable  parts  of  ancient  heathen- 
ism ;  sacred  fish  are  still  kept  in  pools  at  the  mosques  of 

H.  E.  ii.  4,  5.  Zosinms,  i.  58,  says  only  that  fireballs  appearrd  at  the 
temple  and  the  places  about  it,  on  the  occasion  of  solemn  feasts,  and  does  not 
connect  the  apparition  with  the  sacred  waters.  There  is  nothing  improbable 
in  the  frequent  occurrence  of  striking  electrical  phenomena  in  a  mountain 
sanctuary.  AVe  shall  presently  find  fiery  ajiparitions  connected  also  with 
sacred  trees  {infra,  p.  176).  "Thunders,  lightnings  and  light  flashing 
in  the  heavens,"  appear  as  objects  of  veneration  among  the  Syrians  (Jacob 
of  Ed.,  Qu.  43)  ;  cf.  also  the  fiery  globe  of  the  Heliopolitan  Lion-god,  whose 
fall  from  heaven  is  described  by  Damascius,  Vit.  Is.  §  203,  and  what 
Pausanias  of  Damascus  relates  of  the  fireball  that  checked  the  flood  of  the 
Orontes  (Malalas,  p.  38). 

1  Xenophon,  Anab.  i.  4,  9,  who  found  such  fish  in  the  Chalus  near 
Aleppo,  expressly  says  that  they  were  regarded  as  gods.  Lucian,  Dea  Syr. 
xlv.,  relates  that  at  the  lake  of  Atargatis  at  Hierapolis  the  sacred  fish 
wore  gold  ornaments,  as  did  also  the  eels  at  the  sanctuary  of  the  war-god 
Zeus,  amidst  the  sacred  plane-trees  (Herod.,  v.  119),  at  Labraunda  in  Caria 
(Pliny,  ff.  N.  xxxii.  16,  17  ;  JFAian,  N.  A.  xii.  30).  Caria  was  thoroughly 
permeated  by  Phoenician  influence. 


LECT.   V. 


SACRED    WATERS.  161 


Tripolis  and  Edessa.  At  the  latter  i)lace  it  is  believed 
that  death  or  other  evil  consequences  would  befall  the 
man  who  dared  to  eat  theni.^ 

The  living  power  that  inhabits  sacred  waters  and  gives 
them  their  miraculous  or  healing  (quality  is  very  often  held 
to  be  a  serpent,  as  in  the  Arabian  and  Hebrew  cases  which 
have  been  already  cited,^  or  a  huge  dragon  or  water 
monster,  such  as  that  which  in  the  Antiochene  legend 
liollowed  out  the  winding  bed  of  tlie  Orontes  and  dis- 
appeared beneath  its  source.^  In  such  cases  the  serpents 
are  of  course  supernatural  serpents  or  jinn,  and  the 
dragon  of  Orontes  was  identified  in  the  Greek  period  with 
Typhon,  the  enemy  of  the  gods.* 

In  all  their  various  forms  the  point  of  tlie  legends  is 
that  the  sacred  source  is  either  inhabited  by  a  demoniac 
beint:  or  imbued  with  demoniac  life.  The  same  notion 
appears  with  great  distinctness  in  the  ritual  of  sacred 
waters.  Though  such  waters  are  often  associated  with 
temples,  altars,  and  the  usual  apparatus  of  a  cultus  addressed 
to  heavenly  deities,  the  service  paid  to  the  holy  well  re- 
tained a  form  which  implies  that  the  divine  power  addressed 
was  in  the  water.  We  have  seen  that  at  Mecca,  and  at  the 
Stygian  waters  in  the  Syrian  desert,  gifts  were  cast  into  the 
holy  source.  But  even  at  Aphaca,  where,  in  the  times  to 
which  our  accounts  refer,  the  goddess  of  the  spot  was  held 
to  be   the  Urania  or  celestial  Astarte,  the  pilgrims  cast 

1  Sacliau,  Rmc,  p.  197.  ^  Supra,  p.  153  .S77. 

3  The  Leviathan  (pn)  of  Scripture,  like  the  Arabian  tinnln,  is  probably 
a  personification  of  tiie  waterspout  (Mas'uJi,  i.  263,  266  ;  Psalm  cxlviii.  7). 
Thus  we  see  liow  readily  the  Eastern  imagination  clothes  uciuatic  pheno- 
mena with  an  animal  form.  ^ 

■*  Hence  perhaps  the  modern  name  of  the  river  Nahr  al-*Asi,  "  the  rebel's 
stream  ; "  the  explanation  in  Yacut,  iii.  fiSS,  does  not  commend  itself.  The 
burial  of  the  Typhonic  dragon  at  the  source  of  the  Orontes  may  be  compared 
with  the  Moslem  legend  of  the  well  at  Babylon,  where  the  rebel  angels 
Harut  and  Marut  were  entombed  (Cazwini,  i.  197). 

L 


162  ORACLES    FROM  LECT.  v. 


into  the  pool  jewels  of  gold  and  silver,  webs  of  linen  and 
byssus,  and  other  precious  stuffs,  and  the  obvious  contra- 
diction between  the  celestial  character  of  the  goddess  and 
the  earthward  destination  of  the  gifts  was  explained  by 
the  fiction  that  at  the  season  of  the  feast  she  descended 
into  the  pool  in  the  form  of  a  fiery  star.  Similarly,  at  the 
annual  fair  and  feast  of  the  Terebinth,  or  tree  and  well  of 
Abraham  at  Mamre,  the  heathen  visitors,  who  reverenced  the 
spot  as  a  haunt  of  "  angels,"  -^  not  only  offered  sacrifices  beside 
the  tree,  but  illuminated  the  well  with  lamps,  and  cast 
into  it  libations  of  wine,  cakes,  coins,  myrrh  and  incense.^ 

In  ancient  religion  offerings  are  the  proper  vehicle  of 
prayer  and  supplication,  and  the  worshipper  wdien  he  pre- 
sents his  ccift  looks  for  a  visible  indication  whether  his 
prayer  is  accepted.^  At  Aphaca  and  at  the  Stygian 
fountain  the  accepted  gift  sank  into  the  depths,  the 
unacceptable  offering  was  cast  forth  by  the  eddies.  It 
was  taken  as  an  omen  of  the  impending  fall  of  Palmyra 
that  the  gifts  sent  from  that  city  at  an  annual  festival 
were  cast  up  again  in  the  following  year."^  In  this 
example  we  see  that  the  holy  well,  by  declaring  the 
favourable  or  unfavourable  disposition  of  the  divine  power, 
becomes  a  place  of  oracle  and  divination.  In  Greece, 
also,  holy  wells  are  connected  with  oracles,  but  mainly 
in  the  form  of  a  belief  that  the  water  gives  prophetic 
inspiration  to  those  who  drink  of  it.  At  the  Semitic 
oracle  of  Aphaca  the  method  is  more  primitive,  for  the 
answer  is  given  directly  by  the  water  itself,  but  its  range 
is  limited  to  what  can  be  inferred  from  the  acceptance  or 
rejection  of  the  worshipper  and  his  petition. 

^  I.e.  dsemons.  Sozomen  says  "angels,"  and  not  "devils,"  because  the 
sanctity  of  the  place  was  acknowledged  by  Christians  also. 

2  Sozomen,  H.  E.  ii.  4.  ^  Cf.  Gen.  iv.  4,  5. 

*  Zosimus,  i.  58.  At  Aphaca,  as  at  the  Stygian  fountain,  the  waters  fall 
down  a  cataract  into  a  deep  gorge. 


LECT.  V.  SACRED    WATERS.  1G3 

The  oracle  at  Daphne  near  Autioch,  which  was  obtained 
by  dipping  a  laurel  leaf  into  the  water,  was  presumably  of 
the  same  class,  for  we  cannot  take  seriously  the  statement 
that  the  response  appeared  written  on  the  leaf.^  The 
choice  of  the  laurel  leaf  as  the  offering  cast  into  the 
water  must  be  due  to  Greek  inliuence,  but  Daphne  was  a 
sanctuary  of  Heracles,  i.e.  of  the  Semitic  Baal,  before  the 
temple  of  Apollo  was  built.^ 

An  oracle  that  speaks  by  receiving  or  rejecting  the  wor- 
shipper and  his  homage  may  very  readily  pass  into  an 
ordeal,  where  the  person  who  is  accused  of  a  crime,  or  is 
suspected  of  having  perjured  himself  in  a  suit,  is  presented 
at  the  sanctuary,  to  be  accepted  or  rejected  by  the  deity, 
in  accordance  with  the  principle  that  no  impious  person 
can  come  before  God  with  impunity.^  A  rude  form  of 
this  ordeal  seems  to  survive  even  in  modern  times  in 
the  widespread  form  of  trial  of  witches  by  water.  In 
Hadramaut,  according  to  Macrlzl,*  when  a  man  was  in- 
jured by  enchantment,  he  brought  all  the  witches  suspect 
to  the  sea  or  to  a  deep  pool,  tied  stones  to  their  backs  and 
threw  them  into  the  water.  She  who  did  not  sink  was 
the  guilty  person,  the  meaning  evidently  being  that  the 
sacred  element  rejects  the  criminal.^  That  an  impure 
person  dare  not  approach  sacred  waters  is  a  general 
principle — whether  the  impurity  is  moral  or  physical  is 
not  a  distinction  made  by  ancient  religion.  Thus  in 
Arabia  we  have  found  that  a  woman  in  her  uncleanness 


^  Sozomen,  v.  19.  11. 

2  Malalas,  p.  204.  A  vari.int  of  this  form  of  oracle  occurs  at  Myra  in  Lycia, 
where  the  omen  is  from  the  sacreil  lish  accepting  or  rejecting  the  food  olfered 
to  them  (Pliny,  //.  X.  xxxii.  17  ;  yElian,  N.  A.  viii.  5  ;  Athena3us,  viii.  8, 
p.  333).  How  far  Lycian  worship  was  influenced  by  the  Semites  is  not 
clear. 

3  Cf.  Job  xiii.  16  ;  Isa  xxxiii.  14.  *  De  Voile  Hadhramard,  p.  26  nq. 
'  The  story  about  Mojamnii'  and  Al-Ahwaj  {A<jh.  ir.  48),  cited  by  Well- 

bauscu,  Utid.  p.  152,  refers  to  this  kind  of  ordeal,  not  to  a  form  of  magic. 


164  THE   WATER  lect.  V. 

was  afraid,  for  her  children's  sake,  to  bathe  in  the  water  of 
Dusares ;  and  to  this  day  among  the  Yezldls  no  one  may 
enter  the  valley  of  Sheik  Adi,  with  its  sacred  fountain, 
unless  he  has  first  purified  his  body  and  clothes.^  The 
sacred  oil-spring  of  the  Carthaginian  sanctuary  described 
by  Aristotle  ^  would  not  flow  except  for  persons  ceremoni- 
ally pure.  An  ordeal  at  a  sacred  spring  based  on  this 
principle  might  be  worked  in  several  ways,^  but  the  usual 
Semitic  method  seems  to  have  been  by  drinking  the  water. 
Evidently,  if  it  is  dangerous  for  the  impious  person  to  come 
into  contact  with  the  holy  element,  the  danger  must  be 
intensified  if  he  ventures  to  take  it  into  his  system,  and  it 
was  believed  that  in  such  a  case  the  draught  produced 
disease  and  death.  At  the  Asbamrean  lake  and  springs 
near  Tyana  the  water  was  sweet  and  kindly  to  those  that 
swore  truly,  but  the  perjured  man  was  at  once  smitten  in 
his  eyes,  feet  and  hands,  seized  with  dropsy  and  wasting.* 
In  like  manner  he  who  swore  falsely  by  the  Stygian  waters 
in  the  Syrian  desert  died  of  dropsy  within  a  year.  In  the 
latter  case  it  would  seem  that  the  oath  by  the  waters 
sufficed ;  but  primarily,  as  we  see  in  the  other  case,  the 
essential  thing  is  the  draught  of  water  at  the  holy  place, 
the  oath  simply  taking  the  place  of  the  petition  which 
ordinarily  accompanies  a  ritual  act.  Among  the  Hebrews 
this  ordeal  by  drinking  holy  water  is  preserved  even  in  the 
Pentateuchal  legislation  in  the  case  of  a  woman  suspected 
of  infidelity  to  her  husband.^  Here  also  the  l^elief  was 
that  the  holy  water,  which  was  mingled  with  the  dust  of 


1  Layard,  Nineveh,  i.  280.  -  3Iir.  A  use.  §  113. 

^  See,  for  example,  the  Sicilian  orade  of  the  Palic  lake,  wliere  the  oath  of 
the  accused  was  written  on  a  tablet  and  cast  into  the  water  to  sink  or  swim. 
Aristotle,  Mir.  Ausc.  §  57. 

*  Arist.,  Mir.  ylwxc.  §  152  ;  Philostr.,  Vit.  ApoUonii,  i.  6.  That  the  sanc- 
tuary was  Semitic  I  infer  from  its  name  ;  see  below,  p.  160. 

*  Numb.  V.  11  sqq. 


LECT.  V.  OF   JEALOUSY.  1G5 

the  Scanctuary,  and  administered  with  an  oatli,  produced 
dropsy  and  wasting ;  and  the  anticpiity  of  the  ceremony  is 
evident  not  only  from  its  whole  character,  hut  because  the 
expression  "  holy  water  "  (ver.  17)  is  unique  in  the  language 
of  Hebrew  ritual,  and  must  be  taken  as  an  isolated  survival 
of  an  obsolete  expression.  Unique  though  the  expression 
be,  it  is  not  difficult  to  assign  its  original  meaning ;  the 
analogies  already  before  us  indicate  that  we  must  think  of 
water  from  a  holy  spring,  and  this  conclusion  is  certainly 
correct.  Wellhausen  has  shewn  that  the  oldest  Hebrew 
tradition  refers  the  origin  of  the  Torah  to  the  divine 
sentences  taught  by  Moses  at  the  sanctuary  of  Kadesh  or 
Meribah,^  beside  the  holy  fountain  which  in  Gen.  xiv.  7  is 
also  called  "  the  fountain  of  judgment."  The  principle 
underlying  the  administration  of  justice  at  the  sanctuary  is 
that  cases  too  hard  for  man  are  referred  to  the  decision  of 
God.  Among  the  Hebrews  in  Canaan  this  was  ordinarily 
done  by  an  appeal  to  the  sacred  lot,  but  the  survival  of 
even  one  case  of  ordeal  by  holy  water  leaves  no  doubt  as 
to  the  sense  of  the  "  fountain  of  judgment "  (En-mishpat) 
or  "  waters  of  controversy  "  (Meribah). 

AVith  this  evidence  before  us  as  to  the  early  importance 
of  holy  waters  among  the  Hebrews,  we  cannot  but  attach 
significance  to  the  fact  that  the  two  chief  i)laces  of  pilgrim- 
age of  the  northern  Israelites  in  the  time  of  Amos  were 
Dan  and  Beersheba."  We  have  already  seen  that  there 
was  a  sacred  fountain  at  Dan,  and  the  sanctuary  of  Beer- 
sheba  properly  consisted  of  the  "  Seven  Wells,"  which  gave 
the  place  its  name.  It  is  notable  that  among  the  Semites 
a  special  sanctity  was  attached  to  groups  of  seven  wells.'* 
In  the  canons  of  Jacob  of  Edessa  (Qu.  43)  we  read    of 

^  Proler/omena,  viii.  3  (E.  Tr.  p.  343). 

-  Amos  viii.  14  ;  cf.  1  Kiiirfs  xii.  30. 

3  See  Niilileke  in  Litt.  Centrnlblatt,  22  Mar.  1879,  p.  364. 


166  SEVEN  WELLS.  lect.  v. 

nominally  Christian  Syrians  who  bewail  their  diseases  to 
the  stars,  or  turn  for  help  to  a  solitary  tree  or  a  fountain 
or  seven  springs  or  water  of  the  sea,  etc.  Among  the 
Mandseans,  also,  we  read  of  mysteries  performed  at  seven 
wells,  and  among  the  Arabs  a  place  called  "the  seven  wells" 
is  mentioned  by  Strabo,  xvi.  4,  24.^  The  name  of  the 
Asbama?an  waters  seems  also  to  mean  "  seven  waters  "  (Syr. 
shah  a  mayo) ;  the  spot  is  a  lake  where  a  number  of 
sources  bubble  up  above  the  surface  of  the  water.  Seven 
is  a  sacred  number  among  the  Semites,  particularly  affected 
in  matters  of  ritual,  and  the  Hebrew  verb  "  to  swear " 
means  literally  "  to  come  under  the  influence  of  seven 
things."  Thus  seven  ewe  lambs  figure  in  the  oath  between 
Abraham  and  Abimelech  at  Beersheba,  and  in  the  Arabian 
oath  of  covenant  described  by  Herod.,  iii.  8,  seven  stones 
are  smeared  with  blood.  The  oath  of  purgation  at  seven 
wells  would  therefore  have  peculiar  force.^ 

It  is  the  part  of  a  divine  power  to  grant  to  his 
worshippers  not  only  oracles  and  judgment,  but  help  in 
trouble  and  blessing  in  daily  life.  The  kind  of  blessing 
which  it  is  most  obvious  to  expect  from  a  sacred  spring  is 
the  quickening  and  fertilisation  of  the  soil  and  all  that 
depends  on  it.  That  fruitful  seasons  were  the  chief  object 
of  petition  at  the  sacred  springs  requires  no  special  proof, 
for  this  object  holds  the  first  place  in  all  the  great  religious 
occasions  of  the  settled  Semites,  and  everywhere  we  find 
that  the  festal  cycle  is  regulated  by  the  seasons  of  the 
agricultural  year.^     Beyond  doubt  the  first  and  best  gift 

^  Cf.  also  the  seven  marvellous  wells  at  Tiberias  (Cazwini,  i.  193),  and  the 
"  Pleiad  "  waters  at  Dariya  {.supra,  p.  153). 

'^  In  Amos  viii.  14  there  is  mention  of  an  oath  by  the  way  (ritual  ?)  of 
Beersheba.  The  pilgrims  at  Jlamre  would  not  drink  of  the  water  of  the* 
well.  Sozomen  supposes  that  the  gifts  cast  in  made  it  undrinkable  ;  but  at 
an  Oriental  market,  where  every  bargain  is  aceomj)anied  by  false  oaths  and  pro- 
testations, the  precaution  is  rather  to  be  explained  by  fear  of  the  divine  ordeal. 

^  A  myth  of  the  connection  of  sacred  waters  with  the  origin  of  agriculture 


LECT.  V.  HEALIN(}    WATERS.  107 

of  the  sacred  spring  to  the  worshipper  was  it's  own  life- 
giving  water,  and  the  first  object  of  the  religion  addressed 
to  it  was  to  encourau'C  its  benignant  ilow.^  I'ut  the.  life- 
giving  power  of  the  holy  stream  was  by  no  means  confined 
to  the  ({uickening  of  vegetation.  Sacred  waters  are  also 
liealing  waters,  as  we  have  already  seen  in  various  examples, 
particularly  in  that  of  the  Syrians,  who  sought  to  them  for 
help  in  disease.  I  may  here  add  one  instance  which,  though 
it  lies  a  little  outside  of  the  proper  Semitic  region,  is  con- 
nected with  a  holy  river  of  the  Syrians,  In  the  Middle 
Ages  it  was  still  believed  that  he  who  bathed  in  the  spring- 
time in  the  source  of  the  Euphrates  would  be  free  from 
sickness  for  the  whole  year.^  This  healing  power  was  not 
confined  to  the  water  itself,  but  extended  to  the  vegetation 
that  surrounded  it.  P>y  the  sacred  river  Belus  grew  the 
Colocasium  plants  by  which  Heracles  was  healed  after  his 
conflict  with  the  Hydra,  and  the  roots  continued  to  be  used 
as  a  cure  for  bad  sores.^  At  Paneas  an  herb  that  healed 
all  diseases  grew  at  the  base  of  a  statue  which  was 
supposed  to  represent  Christ,  evidently  a  relic  of  the  old 
heathenism  of  the  place.*  Thus  when  Ezekiel  describes 
the  sacred  waters  that  issue  from  the  New  Jerusalem  as 
giving  life  wherever  they  come,  and  the  leaves  of  the  trees 

seems  to  survive  in  modernised  form  in  tlie  mediajval  legend  of  "Ain  ;il- 
bacar,  "the  oxen's  well,"  at  Acre.  It  was  visited  by  Christian,  Jewish  and 
Moslem  ]iilgrims,  because  the  oxen  with  which  Adam  plouglied  issued  from 
it  (Cazwini,  Yficut).  There  was  a  mash/ted,  or  sacred  tomb,  beside  it, 
perhaps  the  modern  representative  of  the  ancient  Memuoniuni. 

^  In  Numb.  xxi.  17  we  find  a  song  addressed  to  the  well  exhorting  it  to 
rise,  which  in  its  origin  is  hardly  a  mere  poetic  figure.  We  may  compare 
what  Cazwini,  i.  189,  records  of  the  well  of  Ilabistan.  "When  the  water  failed, 
a  feast  was  held  at  the  source,  with  music  and  dancing,  to  induce  it  to  How 
again. 

-  Cazwini,  i.  194.  I  may  also  cite  the  numerous  fables  of  amulets,  to  be 
found  in  the  Tigris  and  other  rivers,  which  protected  their  wearers  against 
wild  beasts,  demons  and  other  dangers  (Arist.,  Mir.  Ausc.  159  sq.). 

^  Claudius  lolaus,  fl/>.  Steph.  Byz.,  s.v.  " Kx.r,. 

*  Theophanes,  quoted  by  Reland,  ii.  922. 


1G8  HEALING   WATERS.  lect.  V. 

on  their  banks  as  supplying  medicine,  his  ihiagery  is  in  full 
touch  with  common  Semitic  ideas  (Ezek.  xlvii.  9,  12). 

The  healing  power  of  sacred  water  is  closely  connected 
with  its  purifying  and  consecrating  power,  for  the  primary 
conception  of  uncleanness  is  that  of  a  dangerous  infection. 
Washings  and  purifications  play  a  great  part  in  Semitic 
ritual,  and  were  performed  with  living  water,  which  was  as 
such  sacred  in  some  degree.  Whether  specially  sacred 
springs  were  used  for  purification,  and  if  so  under  what 
restrictions,  I  cannot  make  out ;  in  most  cases,  I  apprehend, 
they  were  deemed  too  holy  to  be  approached  by  a  person 
technically  impure.  It  appears,  however,  from  Ephnem 
Syrus  that  the  practice  of  bathing  in  fountains  was  one  of  the 
heathen  customs  to  which  the  Syrians  of  his  time  were  much 
addicted,  and  he  seems  to  regard  this  as  a  sort  of  heathen  con- 
secration.^ Unfortunately  the  rhetoric  of  the  Syrian  fathers 
seldom  condescends  to  precise  details  on  such  matters. 

Erom  this  account  of  the  ritual  of  sacred  wells  it 
will,  I  think,  be  clear  that  the  usages  and  ceremonies  are 
all  intelligible  on  general  principles,  without  reference  to 
particular  legends  or  the  worship  of  the  particular  deities 
associated  with  special  waters.  The  fountain  is  treated  as 
a  living  thing,  those  properties  of  its  waters  which  we  call 
natural  are  regarded  as  manifestations  of  a  divine  life,  and 
the  source  itself  is  honoured  as  a  divine  being,  I  had 
almost  said  a  divine  animal.  When  religion  takes  a  form 
decidedly  anthropomorphic  or  astral,  myths  are  devised  to 
reconcile  the  new  point  of  view  with  the  old  usage,  but  tlie 
substance  of  the  ritual  remains  unchanged. 

Let  us  now  pass  on  from  the  worship  of  sacred  waters 
to  the  cults  connected  with  sacred  trees." 

1  0pp.  iii.  670  sq.;  H.  et  S.,  ed.  Lam)',  ii.  395,  411. 

-  On  sacred  trees  among  the  Semites,  see  Baudissin,  ShuUen,  ii.  184  vjq.; 
for  Arabia,  Wellliausen,  Heid.  p.  101.  Compare  Btitticher,  Baumciiltus  der 
J/tUenen{BeT\.  1856),  andJIaunhardt,  Wakl-  und  Feld-Culte  (Bcrl.  1875,  77). 


LKCT.  V.  SACRED    TREES.  1G9 


That  the  conception  of   trees   as  Jenioniac  beings  was 

fanuliar  to  the  Semites  has  been  ah'eady  shewn  by  many 

examples/  and  there  is  also  abundant  evidence  that  in  all 

parts  of  the  Semitic  area  trees  were  adored  as  divine. 

Tree  worship  pure  and  simple,  where  the  tree  is  in  all 

respects  treated  as  a  god,  is  attested  for  Arabia  in  the  case 

of  the  sacred  date-palm  at  Nejran.^     It  was  adored  at  an 

annual  feast,  when  it  was  all  hung  with  fine  clothes  and 

women's  ornaments.      A  similar  tree,  to  which  the  people 

of  Mecca  resorted   annually,  and  hung  upon   it   weapons, 

garments,  ostrich  eggs  and  other  gifts,  is  spoken  of  in  the 

traditions  of  the  prophet  under  the  vague  name  of  a  dlult 

anwdt,   or   "  tree   to   hang   things  on."      It    seems    to    be 

identical  with   the  sacred  acacia  at  Nakhla  in  which  the 

goddess  Al-'Ozza  was  believed  to  reside.^     liy  the  modern 

Arabs  sacred  trees  are  called  mandhil,  places  where  angels 

or  jinn  descend  and  are  heard  dancing  and  singing.     It  is 

deadly  danger  to  pluck  so  much  as  a  bough  from  such  a 

tree ;  they  are  honoured  with  sacrifices,  and  parts  of  the 

flesh  are  hung  on  them,  as  well  as  shreds  of  calico,  beads, 

etc.     The  sick  man  who  sleeps  under  them  receives  counsel 

in  a  dream  for  the  restoration  of  his  health.'* 

Among  the  heathen  Syrians  tree  worship  must  have  had 

a  large  place,  for  this  is  one  of  the  superstitions  which 

Christianity  itself  was   powerless  to  eradicate.      We  have 

already  met  with  nominal  Christians  of  Syria  who  in  their 

sicknesses  turned  for  help  to  a  solitary  tree,  while  zealous 

Christians  were  at  pains  to  hew  down  the  "  trees  of  the 

demons."^     As  regards  the  Phcenicians  and  Canaanites  we 

have  the  testimony  of  Thilo  Byblius  that  the  plants  of 

the   earth  were   in   ancient   times   esteemed   as   gods  and 

I  Supra,  p.  126.  -  Tabari,  i.  922  (Niildeke's  trans,  p.  181). 

•■•  Wellhauscn,  p.  30  ><qq.,  p.  35. 

■•  Doiifjlity,  Arabia  Descrta,  i.  418  ftuq. 

•'  See  the  citations  iu  Kayscr,  Jacob  v.  Edenxa,  p.  111. 


170  SACRED    TREES.  lect.  V. 

honoured  with  libations  and  sacrifices,  because  from  them 
the  successive  generations  of  men  drew  the  support  of  their 
life.  To  this  day  the  traveller  in  Palestine  frequently 
meets  with  lioly  trees  hung  like  an  Arabian  dlult  anwdt 
with  rags  as  tokens  of  homacre. 

"What  place  the  cult  of  trees  held  in  the  more  developed 
forms  of  Semitic  religion  it  is  not  easy  to  determine.  In 
later  times  the  groves  at  the  greater  sanctuaries  do  not 
seem  to  have  been  direct  objects  of  worship,  though 
they  shared  in  the  inviolability  that  belonged  to  all  the 
surroundings  of  the  deity,  and  were  sometimes  —  like 
the  ancient  cypresses  of  Heracles  at  Daphne  —  believed 
to  have  been  planted  by  the  god  himself.^  It  was  not  at 
the  great  sanctuaries  of  cities  but  in  the  open  field,  where 
the  rural  population  had  continued  from  age  to  age  to 
practise  primitive  rites  without  modification,  that  the 
worship  of  "  solitary  trees "  survived  the  fall  of  the 
great  gods  of  Semitic  heathenism. 

There  is  no  reason  to  think  that  any  of  the  greater 
Semitic  cults  was  developed  out  of  tree  worship.  In  all 
of  them  the  main  place  is  given  to  altar  service,  and  we 
shall  see  by  and  by  that  the  beginnings  of  this  form  of 
worship,  so  far  as  they  can  be  traced  back  to  a  time  when 
the  gods  were  not  yet  anthropomorphic,  point  to  the  cult  of 
animals  rather  than  of  trees.  That  trees  are  habitually 
found  at  sanctuaries  is  by  no  means  inconsistent  with  this 
view,  for  where  the  tree  is  merely  conceived  as  planted  by 
tlie  god  or  as  marking  his  favourite  haunt,  it  receives  no 
direct  homage. 

When,  however,  we  find  that  no  Canaanite  high  place 
was  complete  without  its  sacred  tree  standing  beside  the 
altar,  and  when  we  take   along  with  this  the  undoubted 

1  Similarly  the  tamarisk  at  Beersheba  was  believed  to  liave  been  planted 
by  Abraham  (Gen.  xxi.  33). 


LECT.   V. 


THE    ASHERA.  171 


fact  that  the  direct  cult  of  trees  was  familiar  to  all  the 
Semites,  it  is  hardly  possible  to  avoid  the  conclusion  that 
some    elements    of    tree    worship  entered   into    the   ritual 
even  of  such  deities  as  in  their  origin  were  not  tree-gods. 
The  local  sanctuaries  of  the  Hebrews,  which  the  prophets 
regard   as   purely   heathenish,   and   which    certainly   were 
modelled   in    all    points   on    Canaanite  usage,  were   altar- 
sanctuaries.       But    the    altars    were    habitually    set     up 
"under  green    trees,"   and,   what   is   more,  the   altar   was 
incomplete  unless  an  ashcra  stood  beside  it.      The  meaning 
of  tliis  word,  which  the  Authorised  Version  wrongly  renders 
"grove,"   has  given   rise    to   a   good   deal   of   controversy. 
What  kind  of  object  the  ashcra  was  appears  from  Deut. 
xvi.  21:"  Thou  shalt  not  plant  an  ashcra  of  any  kind  of 
wood   (or,  an   ashcra,  any  kind  of   tree)   beside   the  altar 
of  Jehovah ; "  it  must  therefore  have  been  either  a  living 
tree  or  a  tree-like  post,  and  in  all  probability  either  form 
was  originally  admissible.      The  oldest  altars,  as  we  gather 
from  the  accounts  of  patriarchal  sanctuaries,  stood  under 
actual  trees ;  but  this  rule  could  not  always  be  followed, 
and  in  the  period  of  the  kings  it  would   seem  that   the 
place  of  the  living  tree  was  taken  by  a  dead  post  or  pole, 
planted  in   the   ground   like    an   English  Maypole.'^     The 
ashcra   undoubtedly    was   an   object   of   worship ;    for    the 

nt  is  a  thing  made  by  man's  hands  ;  Isa.  xvii.  8,  cf.  1  Kings  xvi.  33,  etc. 
In  2  Kings  xxi.  7  (cf.  xxiii.  6)  we  read  of  the  Ashera-iniago.  Similarly  in 
1  Kings  XV.  13  there  is  mention  of  a  "grisly  ohject"  which  Queen  .Maacah 
made  for  an  Ashera.  These  ex[)ressions  may  imply  that  the  sacred  pole 
was  sometimes  carved  into  a  kind  of  image.  That  the  sacred  tree  should 
degenerate  first  into  a  mere  Ma3polc,  and  then  into  a  rude  wooden  idol, 
is  in  accordance  with  analogies  found  elsewhere,  e.g.  in  Greece  ;  but  it  seems 
(piite  as  likely  that  the  ashera  is  described  as  a  kind  of  idol  simjily  because 
it  was  used  in  idolatrous  cultus.  An  Assyrian  monument  from  Khoi-sfdifid, 
figured  by  Botta  and  Layard,  and  reproduced  in  Kawlinson,  Moiiaichieji, 
ii,  37,  Stade,  Gesch.  Isr.  i.  461,  shows  an  ornamental  pole  planted  beside  a 
l)ortable  altar.  Priests  stand  before  it  engaged  in  an  act  of  worship,  and  touch 
the  pole  with  their  hands,  or  perhaps  anoint  it  with  some  lii^uid  substance. 


1V2  THE    CANAANITE  lf.ct.  v. 

prophets  put  it  ou  the  same  line  with  other  sacred 
symbols,  images  cippi  and  Baal-pillars  (Isa.  xvii.  8  ;  Mieah 
V.  12  sqq.),  and  the  rhrenician  inscription  of  Mas'ub 
speaks  of  "  the  Astarte  in  the  Ashera  of  the  divinity  of 
Hammon."  The  ashera  tlierefore  is  a  sacred  symbol,  the 
seat  of  the  deity,  and  perhaps  the  name  itself,  as  G. 
Hoffmann  has  suggested,  means  nothing  more  than  the 
"  mark "  of  the  divine  presence.  ]]ut  the  opinion  that 
there  was  a  Canaanite  goddess  called  Ashera,  and  that 
the  trees  or  poles  of  the  same  name  were  her  particular 
symbols,  is  not  tenable ;  every  altar  had  its  ashera,  even 
such  altars  as  in  the  popular,  pre-prophetic  forms  of 
Hebrew  religion  were  dedicated  to  Jehovah.^  This  is 
not  consistent  with  the  idea  that  the  sacred  pole  was  the 
symbol  of  a  distinct  divinity ;  it  seems  rather  to  sliow 
that  in  early  times  tree  worship  had  such  a  vogue  in 
Canaan  that  the  sacred  tree,  or  the  pole  its  surrogate, 
had  come  to  be  viewed  as  a  general  symbol  of  deity  which 
might  fittingly  stand  beside  the  altar  of  any  god.^ 

^  The  prohiliition  in  Deut.  xvi.  21  is  good  evidence  of  llie  previous  practice 
of  the  thing  prohibited.     See  also  2  Kings  xiii.  6. 

-  If  a  god  and  a  goddess  were  worshipped  together  at  the  same  sanctuary, 
as  was  the  case,  for  example,  at  Aphaca  and  Hierapolis,  and  if  the  two  sacred 
symbols  at  the  sanctuary  were  a  pole  and  a  pillar  of  stone,  it  might  naturally 
enough  come  about  that  the  pole  was  identified  with,  the  goddess  and  the 
])illar  with  the  god.  The  worship  of  Tammuz  or  Adonis  was  known  at 
Jerusalem  in  the  time  of  Ezekiel  (viii.  14),  and  with  Adonis  the  goddess 
Astarte  must  also  have  been  worshipped,  probably  as  the  "queen  of  heaven  " 
(Jer.  vii.,  xliv.  ;  cf.  on  this  worship  Kuencn  in  the  Verslmjen,  etc.,  of  the 
Koyal  Acad,  of  Amsterdam,  1888).  It  is  not  therefore  surprising  that  in 
one  or  two  late  passages,  written  at  a  time  when  all  the  worship  of  the  high 
jilaces  was  regarded  as  entirely  foreign  to  the  religion  of  Jehovah,  the 
Asherim  seem  to  be  regarded  as  the  female  partners  of  the  Baalim  ;  i.e. 
that  the  anhera  is  taken  as  a  symbol  of  Astarte  (Judg.  iii.  7).  The  prophets 
of  the  ashera  in  1  Kings  xviii.  19,  who  appear  along  witli  the  prophets  of 
the  Tyrian  Baal  as  ministers  of  the  foreign  religion  introduced  by  Jezebel, 
must  have  been  prophets  of  Astarte.  Tliey  form  part  of  the  Tyrian  queen's 
court,  and  eat  of  her  table,  so  that  they  have  nothing  to  do  with  Hebrew 
religion.  And  conversely  the  old  Hebrew  sacred  poles  can  have  had  nothing 
to  do  with  the  Tyrian  goddess,  for  Jehu  left  the  ashera  at  Samaria  standing 


LECT.  V.  ASH  ERA.  173 

The  general  adoption  of  tree  symbols  at  Canaanite 
sanctuaries  must  be  connected  with  the  fact  that  all 
Canaanite  P>aalim,  whatever  their  original  character,  were 
associated  with  naturally  fertile  spots  (Baal's  land),  and 
were  worshipped  as  the  givers  of  vegetable  increase.  We 
have  seen  already  in  the  case  of  sacred  streams  how  tlie 
life-blood  of  tlie  god  was  conceived  as  diffused  through 
the  sacred  waters,  whicli  tlius  became  themselves  impreg- 
nated with  divine  life  and  energy.  And  it  was  an  easy 
extension  of  this  idea  to  suppose  that  the  tree  whicli 
oversliadowed  the  sacred  fountain,  and  drew  jierennial 
strength  and  freshness  from  the  moisture  at  its  roots,  was 
itself  instinct  with  a  particle  of  divine  life.  With  the 
ancients  the  conception  of  life,  whether  divine  or  Imman, 
was  not  so  much  individualised  as  it  is  with  us ;  thus  for 
example  all  the  members  of  one  kin  were  conceived  as 
having  a  common  life  embodied  in  the  common  blood 
which  flowed  through  their  veins.  Similarly  one  and  tlie 
same  divine  life  might  be  shared  by  a  number  of  objects, 

when  he  abolished  all  trace  of  Tj-riau  worship  (2  Kinjjs  xiii.  (i).  Tlicre  is 
no  evidence  of  the  worship  of  a  divine  pair  among  the  older  Hebrews  ;  in 
the  time  of  Solomon  Astarte  worship  was  a  foreign  religion  (1  Kings  xi.  5), 
and  it  is  plain  from  .ler.  ii.  27  that  in  ordinary  Hebrew  idolatry  the  tree 
or  stock  was  the  symbol  not  of  a  goddess  bnt  of  a  god.  Even  among  the 
Phfenieians  the  association  of  sacred  trees  with  goildesses  rather  than  with 
gods  is  not  so  clear  as  is  often  supposed.  From  all  this  it  lollows  that  the 
"pTO[)hets  of  the  Ashera"  in  1  Kings  I.e.  are  very  misty  jiersonages,  and 
that  the  mention  of  them  implies  a  confusion  between  Astarte  and  tlie 
Ashera,  which  no  Israelite  in  Elijah's  time,  or  indeed  so  long  as  the 
northern  kingdom  stood,  could  have  fallen  into.  In  fact  they  do  not 
reappear  either  in  v.  22  or  in  v.  40,  and  the  mention  of  tliem  seems  to 
be  due  to  a  late  interpolation  (Wellh.,  He.xateuch,  2nd  ed.  (1889),  p.  2S1). 

The  evidence  offered  by  Assyriologists  that  Ashrat  :=  Ashera  was  a 
goddess  (see  Schrader  in  Zeitschr.  f.  Asayriologie,  iii.  363  .S7.)  cannot 
overrule  the  plain  sense  of  the  Hebrew  texts.  Whether  it  suHices  to  show 
tliat  in  some  places  the  general  symbol  of  deit}''  had  become  a  special 
goddess  is  a  question  on  which  I  do  not  offer  an  ojiinion  ;  but  see  G. 
Hoffmann,  Uebir  liniija  Phrrn.  Inschrr.  (1889),  p.  26  ••'77.,  whose  whole 
remarks  arc  noteworthy.  In  C'lt.  51  (ZDMG.  xxxv.  424)  the  godtlcss  seems 
to  be  called  the  mother  of  the  sacred  pole  (DlL'Xn  CX)- 


174  LEGENDS    OF  LECT.  V. 

if  all  of  them  were  nourished  from  a  common  vital 
source,  and  the  elasticity  of  this  conception  made  it  very 
easy  to  bring  a  variety  of  natural  sacred  objects  of  different 
kinds  into  the  worship  of  one  and  the  same  god.  Elements 
of  water  worship^  of  tree  worship  and  of  animal  worship 
could  all  be  combined  in  the  ritual  of  a  single  anthropo- 
morphic deity,  by  the  simple  supposition  that  the  life  of 
the  god  flowed  in  the  sacred  waters  and  fed  the  sacred 
tree. 

As  regards  the  connection  of  holy  waters  and  holy  trees, 
it  must  be  remembered  that  in  most  Semitic  lands  self- 
sown  wood  can  flourish  only  where  there  is  underground 
water,  and  where  therefore  springs  or  wells  exist  beside 
the  trees.  Hence  the  idea  that  the  same  life  is  manifested 
in  the  water  and  in  the  surrounding  vegetation  could 
hardly  fail  to  suggest  itself,  and,  broadly  speaking,  the 
holiness  of  fountains  and  that  of  trees,  at  least  among  the 
northern  Semites,  appear  to  be  parts  of  the  same  religious 
conception,  for  it  is  only  in  exceptional  cases  that  the  one 
is  found  apart  from  the  other. -^ 

Where  a  tree  was  worshipped  as  the  symbol  of  an 
anthropomorphic  god  we  sometimes  find  a  transformation 
legend  directly  connecting  the  life  of  the  god  with  the 
vegetative  life  of  the  tree.  This  kind  of  myth,  in  which 
a  god  is  transformed  into  a  tree  or  a  tree  springs  from  the 
l)lood  of  a  god,  plays  a  large  part  in  the  sacred  lore  of 
Phrygia,  where  tree  worship  had  peculiar  prominence,  and 
is  also  common  in  Greece.  The  Semitic  examples  are  not 
numerous,  and  are  neither  so  early  nor  so  well  attested  as 
to  inspire  confidence  that  they  are  genuine  old  legends 
independent  of  Greek  influence.^     The  most  important  of 

1  In  Greece  also  it  is  an  exception  to  find  a  sacidl  tree  without  its  foun- 
tain ;  Biitticher,  p.  47. 

^  Cf.  Baudissin,  op.  cit.  p.  214. 


LECT.  V.  HOLY   TREES.  175 


them  is  the  myth  told  at  Bjbhis  in  the  time  of  Plutarch, 
of  the  sacred  erica  which  was  worshipped  in  the  temple 
of  Isis,  and  was  said  to  have  grown  round  the  dead  body  of 
Osiris.  At  Byblus,  Isis  and  Osiris  are  really  Astarte  and 
Adonis,  so  this  may  possibly  be  au  original  Semitic  legend 
of  a  holy  tree  growing  from  the  grave  of  a  god.^ 

I  apprehend,  however,  that  the  physical  link  between 
trees  and  anthropomorphic  gods  was  generally  sought  in 
the  sacred  water  from  which  the  trees  drew  their  life. 
This  is  probable  from  the  use  of  the  terms  Ba'l  and  'Athari 
to  denote  trees  that  need  neither  rain  nor  irrigation,  and 
indeed  from  the  whole  circle  of  ideas  connected  with  Baal's 
land.  A  tree  belonged  to  a  particular  deity,  not  because  it 
was  of  a  particular  species,  but  simply  because  it  was  the 
natural  wood  of  the  place  where  the  god  was  worshipped 
and  sent  forth  his  quickening  streams  to  fertilise  the 
earth.  The  sacred  trees  of  the  Semites  include  every 
prominent  species  of  natural  wood — the  pines  and  cedars 
of  Lebanon,  the  evergreen  oaks  of  the  Palestinian  hills,  the 
tamarisks  of  the  Syrian  jungles,  the  acacias  of  the  Arabian 
wadies,  and  so  forth.  So  far  as  these  natural  woods  are 
concerned,  the  attempts  that  have  been  made  to  connect 
individual  species  of  trees  with  the  worship  of  a  single 
deity  break  down  altogether ;  it  cannot,  for  example,  be 
said  that  the  cypress  belongs  to  Astarte  more  than  to 
Melcarth,  who  planted  the  cypress  trees  at  Daphne. 

^  Plut.,  Is.  et  Os.  §§  15,  16.  One  or  two  features  in  tlie  story  are  note- 
worthy. The  sacred  erica  was  a  mere  dead  stump,  for  it  was  cut  down  by 
Isis  and  presented  to  tlie  Byblians  wrapped  in  a  linen  cloth  and  anointed 
with  myrrh  like  a  corpse.  It  therefore  represented  the  dead  god.  But  as 
a  mere  stump  it  also  resembles  the  Hebrew  ashera.  Can  it  be  that  the 
rite  of  draping  and  anointing  a  sacred  stump  supplies  the  answer  to  the 
unsolved  (juestion  of  the  nature  of  the  ritual  practices  connected  with  the 
Ashera  ?  Some  sort  of  drapery  for  the  axhera  is  spoken  of  in  2  Kings  xxiii. 
7,  and  the  Assyrian  representation  cited  on  p.  171,  note  1,  perhaps  repre- 
sents the  anointing  of  the  sacred  pole. 


176  FIERY 


LECT.   V. 


Cultivated  trees,  on  the  other  hand,  such  as  the  pahn, 
the  olive  and  the  vine,  might  a  jpriori  be  expected,  among 
the  Semites  as  among  the  Greeks,  to  be  connected  with 
the  special  worship  of  the  deity  of  the  spot  from  which 
their  culture  was  diffused ;  for  reliirion  and  agricultural  arts 
spread  together  and  the  one  carried  the  other  with  it. 
Yet  even  of  this  there  is  little  evidence ;  the  palm  was  a 
familiar  symbol  of  Astarte,  but  we  also  find  a  "  Baal  of  the 
palm-tree "  (Baal  Tamar)  in  a  place-name  in  Judges  xx. 
33.  The  only  clear  Semitic  case  of  the  association  of  a 
particular  deity  with  a  fruit  tree  is,  I  believe,  that  of  the 
N"abata?an  Dusares,  who  was  the  god  of  the  vine.  But 
the  vine  came  to  the  Nabatjieans  only  in  the  period  of 
Hellenic  culture,^  and  Dusares  as  the  wine  -  god  seems 
simply  to  have  borrowed  the  traits  of  Dionysus. 

At  Aphaca  at  the  annual  feast  the  goddess  appeared  in 
the  form  of  a  fiery  meteor,  which  descended  from  the 
mountain-top  and  plunged  into  the  water,  while  according 
to  another  account  fire  played  about  the  temple,  })resumably, 
since  an  electrical  phenomenon  must  have  lain  at  the 
foundation  of  this  belief,  in  the  tree-tops  of  the  sacred 
grove.^  In  like  manner  Jehovah  appeared  to  Moses  in 
the  bush  in  flames  of  fire,  so  that  the  bush  seemed  to  burn 
yet  not  to  be  consumed.  The  same  phenomenon,  according 
to  Africanus  ^  and  Eustathius  ^  was  seen  at  the  terebinth 
of  Mamre ;  the  whole  tree  seemed  to  1  )e  aflame,  but  when 
the  fire  sank  again  remained  unharmed.  As  lights  were 
set  by  the  well  under  the  tree,  and  the  festival  was  a 
nocturnal  one,  this  was  probably  nothing  more  than  an 
optical  delusion  exaggerated  by  the  superstitious  imagination, 
a  mere  artificial  contrivance  to  keep  up  an  ancient  belief 
which  must  once  have  had  wide  currency  in  connection 

'  Diodorus,  xiv.  94.  3.  ^  Supra,  p.  159,  note  5. 

^  Georg.  Syncellus,  Bonn  eJ.  p.  202.  ♦  Cited  by  Reland,  p.  712. 


LECT.  V.  APPARITIONS.  177 

with  sacred  trees,  and  is  remarkable  because  it  shows  how 
a  tree  might  become  holy  apart  from  all  relation  to 
agriculture  and  fertility.  Jehovah,  "  who  dwells  in  the 
bush"  (Deut.  xxxiii.  IG),  in  the  arid  desert  of  Sinai,  was 
the  God  of  the  Hebrews  while  they  were  still  nomads 
ignorant  of  agriculture  ;  and  indeed  the  original  seat  of  a 
conception  like  the  burning  bush,  which  must  have  its 
physical  basis  in  electrical  phenomena,  must  probably  be 
sought  in  the  clear  dry  air  of  the  desert  or  of  lofty 
mountains.  The  apparition  of  Jehovah  in  the  burning 
bush  belongs  to  the  same  circle  of  ideas  as  His  apparition 
in  the  thunders  and  lightnings  of  Sinai. 

When  the  divine  manifestation  takes  such  a  form  as 
the  flames  in  the  bush,  the  connection  between  the  god  and 
the  material  symbol  is  evidently  much  looser  than  in  the 
Baal  type  of  religion,  where  the  divine  life  is  immanent 
in  the  life  of  the  tree ;  and  the  transition  is  comparatively 
easy  from  the  conception  of  Deut.  xxxiii.  16,  where 
Jehovah  inhabits  (not  visits)  the  bush,  as  elsewhere  He  is 
said  to  inhabit  the  temple,  to  the  view  prevalent  in  most 
parts  of  the  Old  Testament,  that  the  tree  or  the  pillar  at 
a  sanctuary  is  merely  a  memorial  of  the  divine  name,  the 
mark  of  a  place  where  He  has  been  found  in  the  past  and 
may  be  found  again.  The  separation  between  Jehovah 
and  physical  nature,  which  is  so  sharply  drawn  by  the 
prophets  and  constitutes  one  of  the  chief  points  of 
distinction  between  their  faith  and  that  of  the  masses, 
whose  Jehovah  worship  had  all  the  characters  of  Baal 
worship,  may  be  justly  considered  as  a  development  of  the 
older  type  of  Hebrew  religion.  It  has  sometimes  been 
supposed  that  the  conception  of  a  god  immanent  in  nature 
is  Aryan,  and  that  of  a  transcendental  god  Semitic ;  but 
the  former  view  is  quite  as  characteristic  of  the  Baal 
worship  of  the  agricultural  Semites  as  of  the  early  faiths 

M 


178  DIVIXATION 


LECT.   V, 


of  the  agricultural  Aryans.  It  is  true  that  the  higher 
developments  of  Semitic  religion  took  a  different  line,  but 
they  did  not  grow  out  of  Baal  worship. 

As  regards  the  special  forms  of  cultus  addressed  to 
sacred  trees,  I  can  add  nothing  certain  to  the  very  scanty 
indications  that  have  already  come  before  us.  Prayers 
were  addressed  to  them,  particularly  for  help  in  sickness, 
but  doubtless  also  for  fertile  seasons  and  the  like,  and  they 
were  hung  with  votive  gifts,  especially  garments  and 
ornaments,  perhaps  also  anointed  with  unguents  as  if  they 
had  been  real  persons.  More  could  be  said  about  the  use 
of  branches,  leaves  or  other  parts  of  sacred  trees  in 
lustrations,  as  medicine,  and  for  other  ritual  purposes. 
But  these  things  do  not  directly  concern  us  at  present  ; 
they  are  simply  to  be  noted  as  supplying  additional 
evidence,  if  such  be  necessary,  that  a  sacred  energy,  that 
is  a  divine  life,  resided  even  in  the  parts  of  holy  trees. 

The  only  other  aspect  of  the  subject  which  seems  to 
call  for  notice  at  the  present  stage  is  the  connection  of 
sacred  trees  with  oracles  and  divination.  Oracles  and 
omens  from  trees  and  at  tree  sanctuaries  are  of  the  com- 
monest among  all  races,^  and  are  derived  in  very  various 
ways,  either  from  observation  of  phenomena  connected 
with  the  trees  themselves,  and  interpreted  as  manifestations 
of  divine  life,  or  from  ordinary  processes  of  divination 
performed  in  the  presence  of  the  sacred  object.  Some- 
times the  tree  is  believed  to  speak  with  an  articulate 
voice,  as  the  gharcad  did  in  a  dream  to  Moslim ;  ^  but 
except  in  a  dream  it  is  obvious  that  the  voice  of  the 
tree  can  only  be  some  rustling  sound,  as  of  wind  in  the 
branches,  like  that  which  was  given  to  David  as  a  token 

^  Cf.  Botticher,  op.  cit.,  ch.  xi. 

2  Supra,  p.  126.    The  same  belief  in  trees  from  which  a  spirit  sjieaks  oracles 
occurs  in  a  modern  legend  given  by  Doughty,  Ar.  Des.,  ii.  209. 


LECT.  V.  FROM    TREES.  179 

of  the  right  moment  to  attack  the  Philistines/  and  requires 
a  soothsayer  to  interpret  it.  The  famous  holy  tree  near 
Shechem,  called  the  tree  of  soothsayers  in  Judg.  ix.  37,'^ 
and  the  "  tree  of  the  revealer  "  in  Gen.  xii.  G,  must  have 
been  the  seat  of  a  Canaanite  tree  oracle,'^  We  have  no 
hint  as  to  the  nature  of  the  physical  indications  that 
guided  the  soothsayers,  nor  have  I  found  any  other  case 
of  a  Semitic  tree  oracle  where  the  mode  of  procedure  is 
described.  But  the  belief  in  trees  as  places  of  divine 
revelation  must  have  been  widespread  in  Canaan.  The 
prophetess  Deborah  gave  her  responses  under  a  palm  near 
Bethel,  which  according  to  sacred  tradition  marked  the 
grave  of  the  nurse  of  Eachel.*  That  the  artificial  sacred 
tree  or  ashera  was  used  in  divination  would  follow  from 
1  Kings  xviii.  19,  were  it  not  that  there  are  good  grounds 
for  holding  that  in  this  passage  the  prophets  of  the 
ashera  are  simply  the  prophets  of  the  Tyrian  Astarte. 
But  in  Hosea  iv.  1 2  the  "  stock "  of  which  the  prophets' 
contemporaries  sought  counsel  can  hardly  be  anything  else 
than  the  ashera.^     Soothsayers  who  draw  their  inspiration 

\ 

^  2  Sam.  V.  24.  2  A.Y.  "  plain  of  jreoneuim." 

'  It  was  perhaps  only  one  tree  of  a  sacred  grove,  for  Deut.  xi.  30  speaks 
of  the  "trees  of  the  revealer"  in  the  plural. 

*  Gen.  XXXV.  8.  There  indeed  the  tree  is  called  an  allGn,  a  word  gene- 
rally rendered  oak.  Jiut  allOn,  like  tldh  and  ilOn,  seems  to  be  a  name 
applicable  to  any  sacred  tree,  perhaps  to  any  great  tree.  Stade,  Gench.  Is. 
i.  -155,  would  even  connect  these  words  with  el,  god,  ami  the  Phccuician 
alonim. 

*  As  the  next  clause  says,  "and  their  rod  declareth  to  them,"  it  is 
commonly  sui)posed  that  rhabdomancy  is  alluded  to,  i.e.  the  use  of  divining 
rods.  And  no  doubt  the  divining  rod,  in  which  a  spirit  or  life  is  supposed 
to  reside,  so  that  it  moves  and  gives  indications  apart  from  the  will  of  the 
man  who  holds  it,  is  a  superstition  cognate  to  the  belief  in  sacred  trees  ;  but 
when  "their  rod"  occurs  in  parallelism  with  "their  stock"  or  tree,  it 
lies  nearer  to  cite  Philo  Byldius  ap.  Eus.,  Pr.  Ev.  i.  10.  11,  who  speaks  of 
rods  and  pillars  consecrated  by  the  Phcenicians  and  worshipped  by  annual 
feasts.  On  this  view  the  rod  is  only  a  smaller  ashera.  Drusius  tiierefore 
seems  to  hit  the  mark  in  comparing  Festus's  note  on  dduhrum,  where  the 
Romans  are  said  to  have  worshipped  pilled  rods  as  gods.     See  more  on  rod 


180  HOLY   CAVES 


LECT.    V. 


from   plants   are    found    in    Semitic  legend   even   in    the 
Middle  Ages} 

To  the  two  great  natural  marks  of  a  place  of  worship, 
the  fountain  and  the  tree,  ought  perhaps  to  be  added 
grottoes  and  caves  of  the  earth.  At  the  present  day 
almost  every  sacred  site  in  Palestine  has  its  grotto,  and 
that  this  is  no  new  thing  is  plain  from  the  numerous 
symbols  of  Astarte  worship  found  on  the  walls  of  caves  in 
rhcfinicia.  There  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  oldest 
Phoenician  temples  were  natural  or  artiticial  grottoes,  and 
that  the  sacred  as  well  as  the  profane  monuments  of 
Phoenicia,  with  their  marked  preference  for  monolithic 
forms,  point  to  the  rock-hewn  cavern  as  the  original  type 
that  dominated  the  architecture  of  the  region.^  But  if 
this  be  so,  the  use  of  grottoes  as  temples  in  later  times 
does  not  prove  that  caverns  as  such  had  any  primitive 
religious  significance.  Eeligious  practice  is  always  con- 
servative, and  rock-hewn  temples  would  naturally  be  used 
after  men  had  ceased  to  live  like  troglodytes  in  caves  and 
holes  of  the  earth.  '  Moreover  ancient  temples  are  in 
most  instances  not  so  much  houses  where  the  gods  live,  as 
storehouses  for  the  vessels  and  treasures  of  the  sanctuary. 
The  altar,  the  sacred  tree,  and  the  other  divine  symbols  to 
which  acts  of  worship  are  addressed,  stand  outside  in  front 
of  the  temple,  and  the  whole  service  is  carried  on  in  the 
open  air.  Now  all  over  the  Semitic  world  caves  and  pits 
are  the  primitive  storehouses,  and  we  know  that  in  Arabia 
a  pit  called  the  ghabghah,   in  which    the  sacred   treasure 

worship  in  Bottieher,  op.  dt.  xvi.  5.  Was  the  omen  derived  from  the 
rod  flourishing  or  withering  ?  We  have  such  an  omen  in  Aaron's  rod 
(Numb.  xvii. ),  and  Adonis  rods,  set  as  slips  to  grow  or  wither,  seem  to  be 
referred  to  in  Isa.  xvii.  10  w/7.,  a  passage  whieli  wonkl  certainly  gain  ioice 
if  the  withering  of  the  slips  was  an  ill  omen.  Divination  from  the  flourish- 
ing and  withering  of  sacred  trees  is  very  common  in  antiquity  (Bottieher, 
ch.  xi.). 

1  Chwolsohn,  Smhier,  iL  914.  2  Renan,  Phdnicie,  p.  822  sq. 


LECT.   V. 


AND    PITS.  181 


was  stored,  was  a  usual  adjunct  to  sanctuaries.^  At  the 
same  time  there  seem  to  be  weighty  reasons  for  doubting 
whether  tliis  is  the  whole  explanation  of  cave  sanctuaries. 
In  other  parts  of  the  world,  as  for  example  in  Greece, 
there  are  many  examples  of  caves  associated  with  the 
worship  of  chthonic  deities,  and  also  witli  the  oracles  of 
gods  like  Apollo,  who  are  not  usually  looked  upon  as 
chthonic  or  subterranean  ;  and  the  acts  performed  in  these 
caves  imply  that  they  were  regarded  as  the  peculiar  seats 
of  divine  energy  and  influence.  The  more  common 
opinion  seems  to  be  that  the  gods  of  the  Semites  were 
never  chthonic,  in  the  sense  that  their  seats  and  the 
source  of  their  influence  were  sought  underground.  But 
even  in  Arabia  the  ghahjliah  is  not  merely  a  treasure 
house ;  a  victim  is  said  to  be  brought  to  the  ghadghah,  and 
the  word  is  explained  as  the  name  of  a  j)lace  of  sacrifice, 
or  the  place  where  the  blood  was  poured  out."  The  blood 
therefore  was  allowed  to  flow  into  the  pit,  just  as  the 
annual  human  sacrifice  at  Dumtx'tha  (Duma)  was  buried 
under  the  altar  that  served  as  an  idol.'^  It  is  doubtful 
whether  such  rites  necessarily  imply  that  the  god  was 
conceived  as  living  underground,  but  they  certainly  lend 
themselves  readily  to  that  conception,  and  among  the 
northern  Semites  there  is  at  least  one  case  where  the 
sacred  pit  in  the  sanctuary  was  supposed  to  be  inhabited 
by  a  subterranean  deity.  At  the  temple  of  Hierapolis 
there  was  a  cleft  in  the  earth  under  the  temple,  which 
was  thought  to  communicate  with  the  great  storehouse  of 
subterranean  waters,  and  in  later  Hellenised  legend  was  be- 
lieved to  have  swallowed  up  the  water  of  Deucalion's  flood.* 

1  Wellliaiiscn,  Heid.  j).  100. 
-  Yficut,  iii.  772  sq.  ;  Ibn  Ilishfun,  ^t.  55,  1.  8. 
'  Porpliyry,  De  Abst.  il  56. 

*  Lucian,  De  dea  S;fna,  xiii.      At  Jenisaleiii  also  there  \\i\a  a  cleft,  in 
which  the  waters  of  the  flood  disappeareil. 


182  HOLY   CAVES. 


LECT.   V. 


Melito  ^  calls  this  cleft  a  well,  and  explains  the  ritual 
of  pouring  water  from  the  "  sea "  (i.e.  the  Euphrates) 
into  it,  which  was  practised  twice  a  year  with  great 
solemnity,  as  designed  to  prevent  the  demon  of  the  well 
(i.e.  the  god  of  the  subterranean  waters)  from  issuing 
forth  to  injure  men.  I  take  it  that  this  is  only  a  some- 
what distorted  form  of  the  flood  legend,  and  that  the  god 
of  the  well  is  not  substantially  different  from  any  other 
Semitic  Baal.  For  we  know  that  the  Baal  was  specially 
connected  with  subterranean  waters,  and  the  same  god 
who  in  his  goodwill  sends  fertilising  streams,  may  be 
supposed  in  his  anger  to  send  forth  a  destroying  flood. 
The  ritual  of  pouring  water  into  the  cleft  has  its  parallel 
in  the  modern  practice  at  the  fountain  of  water  before 
the  gates  of  Tyre,  when  in  September  the  water  becomes 
red  and  troubled,  and  the  natives  gather  for  a  great  feast 
and  restore  its  limpidity  by  pouring  a  pitcher  of  sea- 
water  into  the  source — presumably  an  offering  to  appease 
the  angry  god." 

That  the  Baalim,  as  gods  of  the  subterranean  waters 
from  which  springs  are  fed,  have  a  certain  chthonic 
character,  appears  also  from  the  frequent  occurrence, 
especially  beside  sacred  streams,  of  tombs  of  the  god ; 
for  a  buried  god  is  one  who  has  his  seat  underground. 
On  the  whole,  therefore,  I  am  inclined  to  conjecture  that 
caverns  and  clefts  in  the  earth  may  not  seldom  have  been, 
like  the  cleft  at  Hierapolis,  more  than  mere  adjuncts  to 
the  sanctuary,  and  may  have  been  chosen  as  places  of 
worship  because  through  them  the  god  ascended  and 
descended  to  and  from  the  outer  world,  and  through  them 
the  gifts  of  the  worshij^per  could  be  brought  nearer  his 
subterranean    abode.       And    what    seems    particularly    to 

'  In  Cureton,  Spic.  Syr.,  p.  25. 

2  Volney,  Etut  pol.  de  la  Syrie,  ch.  viii. ;  Mariti,  ii.  269. 


LECT.   V. 


HOLY   STONES.  183 


strengthen  this  conjecture  is  tliat  the  adytum,  or  dark- 
inner  chamber,  found  in  many  temples  both  among  the 
Semites  and  in  Greece,  was  almost  certainly  in  its  origin 
a  cave ;  indeed  in  Greece  it  was  often  wholly  or  partially 
subterranean  and  is  called  /xeyapov,  which  is  the  Semitic 
myo  and  means  a  cave.  The  adytum  is  not.  a  constant 
feature  in  Greek  tem})les,  and  the  name  fxeyapov  seems  to 
indicate  that  it  was  borrowed  from  the  Semites.^  Where 
it  does  exist  it  is  a  place  of  oracle,  as  the  Holy  of  Holies 
was  at  Jerusalem,  and  therefore  cannot  be  looked  upon 
in  any  other  light  than  as  the  part  of  the  sanctuary  where 
the  god  is  most  immediately  present. 

From  this  obscure  topic  we  pass  at  once  into  clearer 
light  when  we  turn  to  consider  the  ordinary  artificial 
mark  of  a  Semitic  sanctuary,  viz.  the  sacrificial  pillar, 
cairn  or  rude  altar.  The  sacred  fountain  and  the  sacred 
tree  are  common  symbols  at  sanctuaries,  but  they  are  not 
invariably  found,  and  in  most  cases  they  have  but  a 
secondary  relation  to  the  ordinary  ritual.  In  the  more 
advanced  type  of  sanctuary  the  real  meeting -place 
between  man  and  his  god  is  the  altar.  The  altar  in  its 
developed  form  is  a  raised  structure  upon  which  sacrifices 
are  presented  to  the  god.  Most  commonly  the  sacrifices 
are  fire-offerings,  and  the  altar  is  the  place  where  they 
are  burned,  but  in  another  type  of  ritual,  of  which  the 
lioman  Icdisterniiim  and  the  Hebrew  oblation  of  shewbread 
are  familiar  examples,  the  altar  is  simply  a  table  on  which 
a  meal  is  spread  before  the  deity.  Whether  fire  is  used 
or  not  is  a  detail  in  the  mode  of  presentation  and  does 
not  affect  the  essence  of  the  sacrificial  act.  In  either 
case  the  offering    consists    of    food,  "  the  bread  of    God " 

'The  possibility  of  tliis  can  hardly  be  disputed  when  we  think  of  the 
temple  of  Apollo  at  Delos,  where  the  holy  cave  is  the  original  sanctuary. 
For  this  was  a  place  of  worship  which  the  Greeks  took  over  from  the 
Phajnicians. 


184  ALTAES   AND 


LECT.    V 


as  it  is  called  in  the  Hebrew  ritual/  and  there  is  no 
real  difference  between  a  table  and  altar.  Indeed  the 
Hebrew  altar  of  burnt -offering  is  called  the  table  of  the 
Lord,  while  conversely  the  table  of  shewbread  is  called 
an  altar.^ 

The  table  is  not  a  very  primitive  article  of  furniture,^ 
and  this  circumstance  alone  is  enough  to  lead  us  to  suspect 
that  the  altar  was  not  originally  a  raised  platform  on 
which  a  sacrificial  meal  could  be  set  forth.  In  Arabia, 
where  sacrifice  by  fire  is  almost  unknown,  we  find  no 
proper  altar,  but  in  its  place  a  rude  pillar  or  heap  of 
stones,  beside  which  the  victim  is  slain,  the  blood  being 
poured  out  over  the  stone  or  at  its  base.^  This  ritual  of 
the  blood  is  the  essence  of  the  offering;  no  part  of  the 
flesh  falls  as  a  rule  to  the  god,  but  the  whole  is  distributed 
among  the  men  who  assist  at  the  sacrifice.  The  sacred 
stones,  w^hich  are  already  mentioned  by  Herodotus,  are 
called  ansah  (sing.  ?io.s&),  i.e.  stones  set  up,  pillars.  "We 
also  find  the  name  ghariy,  "  blood-bedaubed,"  with  reference 
to  the  ritual  just  described.  The  meaning  of  this  ritual 
will  occupy  us  later;  meantime  the  thing  to  be  noted 
is  that  the  altar  is  only  a  modification  of  the  nosb,  and 
that  the  rude  Arabian  usage  is  the  primitive  type  out 
of  which  all  the  elaborate  altar  ceremonies  of  the  more 
cultivated  Semites  grew.  Whatever  else  was  done  in 
connection  with  a  sacrifice,  the  primitive  rite  of  sprinkling 
or  dashing  the  blood  against  the  altar,  or  allowing  it  to 
flow   down   on   the   ground   at   its  base,  was  hardly  ever 

^Lev.  xxi.  8,  17,  etc.;  cf.  Lev.  iii.  11. 

=^Mal.  i.  7,  12  ;  Ezek.  xli.  22  ;  cf.  Wellhausen,  Prolegomena,  p.  69.  Tlie 
same  word  (iny)  is  used  of  setting  a  table  and  disposing  the  pieces  of  tlie 
sacrifice  on  the  fire-altar. 

'The  old  Arabian  nofra  is  merely  a  skin  spread  on  the  ground,  not  a 
raised  table. 

'Wellhausen,  Had.,  p.  113;  cf.  ibid.  pp.  39  sq.  99. 


LECT.  V.  SACRIFICIAL    STONES.  185 


omitted ;  ^  and  this  practice  was  not  peculiar  to  the 
Semites  but  was  equally  the  rule  with  the  Greeks  and 
Itomans,  and  indeed  with  the  ancient  nations  generally. 

As  regards  fire  sacrifices  we  shall  find  reason  to  doubt 
whether  the  hearth  on  which  the  sacred  flesh  was  con- 
sumed was  originally  identical  with  the  sacred  stone  or 
cairn  over  which  the  sacrificial  blood  was  allowed  to  flow. 
It  seems  probable,  for  reasons  that  cannot  be  stated  at 
this  point,  that  the  more  modern  form  of  altar,  which 
could  be  used  both  for  the  ritual  of  the  blood  and  as  a 
sacred  hearth,  was  reached  by  combining  two  operations 
which  originally  took  place  apart.  But  in  any  case  it  is 
certain  that  the  original  altar  among  the  northern  Semites, 
as  well  as  among  the  Arabs,  was  a  great  stone  or  cairn 
at  which  the  blood  of  the  victim  was  shed.  At  Jacob's 
covenant  with  Laban  no  other  altar  appears  than  the 
cairn  of  stones  beside  which  the  parties  to  the  compact 
ate  together;  in  the  ancient  law  of  Ex.  xx.  24,  25,  it  is 
prescribed  that  the  altar  must  be  of  earth  or  of  unhewn 
stone;  and  that  a  single  stone  sufficed  appears  from  1 
Sam.  xiv.  32  sqq.,  where  the  first  altar  built  by  Saul  is 
simply  the  great  stone  which  he  caused  to  be  rolled  unto 
him  after  the  battle  of  Michmash,  that  the  people  might 
slay  their  booty  of  sheep  and  cattle  at  it,  and  not  eat  the 
flesh  with  the  blood.  The  simple  shedding  of  the  blood  by 
the  stone  or  altar  consecrated  the  slaughter  and  made  it  a 
legitimate  sacrifice.  Here,  therefore,  there  is  no  difference 
between  the  Hebrew  altar  and  the  Arabian  nosh  or  gliarly. 


^  There  were  indeed  altars  at  wliich  no  animal  sacrifices  were  presented. 
Such  are,  among  tlie  Hebrews,  the  altar  of  incense  and  the  table  of  shewbread, 
and  among  the  Phrenicians  the  altar  at  Paphos  (Tac.,  Hist.  ii.  3) ;  perliajis 
also  the  "altar  of  the  pious"  at  Delos  (Porph.,  De  Abst.  ii.  28)  was  of 
Phoenician  origin.  In  later  times  certivin  exceptional  sacrifices  were  bnrned 
alive  or  slain  without  effusion  of  blood,  but  this  does  not  touch  the  general 
principle. 


186  THE    HEBREW  lect.  v. 


Monolithic  pillars  or  cairns  of  stone  are  frequently- 
mentioned  in  the  more  ancient  parts  of  the  Old  Testament 
as  standing  at  sanctuaries/  generally  in  connection  with 
a  sacred  legend  about  the  occasion  on  which  they  were 
set  up  by  some  famous  patriarch  or  hero.  In  the  Biblical 
story  they  usually  appear  simply  as  memorial  pillars, 
without  any  definite  ritual  significance  ;  but  this  is  due 
to  the  fact  that  the  narratives  are  conformed  to  the 
standpoint  of  the  law  and  of  the  later  prophets,  who 
look  on  the  ritual  use  of  sacred  pillars  as  idolatrous. 
The  condemnation  of  their  use  by  the  Hebrew  prophets 
is  the  best  evidence  that  such  pillars  had  an  important 
place  among  the  appurtenances  of  Canaanite  temples,"  and 
as  Hosea  (iii.  4)  speaks  of  the  masseha,  or  pillar,  as  an 
indispensable  feature  in  the  sanctuaries  of  northern  Israel 
in  his  time,  we  may  be  sure  that  by  the  mass  of  the 
Hebrews  the  pillars  of  Shechem,  Bethel,  Gilgal  and  other 
northern  shrines  were  looked  upon  not  as  mere  memorials 
of  historical  events,  but  as  necessary  parts  of  the  ritual 
apparatus  of  a  place  of  worship.  That  the  special  ritual 
acts  connected  with  the  Canaanite  masseha  were  essentially 
the  same  as  in  the  case  of  the  Arabian  nosb  may  be 
gathered  from  Philo  Byblius,  who,  in  his  pseudo-historical 
manner,  speaks  of  a  certain  Usous  who  consecrated  two 
pillars  to  fire  and  wind,  and  paid  worship  to  them,  pouring 
out  libations  to  them  of  the  blood  of  beasts  taken  in 
hunting.^  From  these  evidences,  and  especially  from  the 
fact  that  libations  of  the  same  kind  are  applied  to  both, 


1  At  Shechem,  Josh.  xxiv.  26  ;  Bethel,  Gen.  xxviii.  18  sqq. ;  Gilead, 
(Raraoth-Gilead),  Gen.  xxxi.  45  sqq.  ;  Gilgal,  Josh.  iv.  5  ;  Mizpeh,  1  Sam. 
vii.  12  ;  Gibeon,  2  Sam.  xx.  8  ;  En-Rogel,  1  Kings  i.  9. 

-  Exod.  xxxiv.  13  ;  Dent.  xii.  3  ;  cf.  Micah  v.  13  (12).  For  pillars  A.V. 
generally  gives,  incorrectly,  "images." 

'Euseb.,  Prcejy.  Ev.  i.  10.  10.  Libations  of  blood  are  mentioned  as  a 
heathenish  rite  in  Psalm  xvi.  4. 


LECT    V.  MASSEBA. 


187 


it  seems  clear  that  the  altar  is  a  differentiated  form  of  the 
primitive  rude  stone  pillar,  the  nosh  or  masseba}  But  the 
sacred  stone  is  more  than  an  altar,  for  in  Hebrew  and 
Canaanite  sanctuaries  the  altar,  in  its  developed  form  as  a 
table  or  hearth,  does  not  supersede  the  pillar ;  the  two  are 
found  side  by  side  at  the  same  sanctuary,  the  altar  as  a 
piece  of  sacrificial  apparatus,  and  the  pillar  as  a  visible 
symbol  or  embodiment  of  the  presence  of  the  deity,  which 
in  process  of  time  conies  to  be  fashioned  and  carved  in 
various  ways,  till  ultimately  it  becomes  a  statue  or  anthro- 
pomorphic idol  of  stone,  just  as  the  sacred  tree  or  post  was 
ultimately  developed  into  an  image  of  wood. 

It  has  been  disputed  whether  the  sacred  stone  at 
Semitic  sanctuaries  was  from  the  first  an  object  of 
worship,  a  sort  of  rude  idol  in  which  the  divinity  was 
somehow  supposed  to  be  present.  It  is  urged  that  in 
the  patriarchal  religion  the  onasseha  is  a  mere  mark 
without  intrinsic  religious  significance.  But  here  the 
answer  is  obvious,' that  the  original  sense  of  the  patriarchal 
symbols  cannot  be  concluded  from  the  sense  put  upon 
them  by  the  Biblical  writers,  who  lived  many  centuries 
after  these  ancient  sanctuaries  were  first  founded,  and 
that,  at  the  time  when  the  oldest  of  these  narratives 
were  written,  the  Canaanites  and  the  great  mass  of  the 
Hebrews  certainly  treated  the  masscha  as  a  sort  of  idol 
or  embodiment  of  the  divine  presence.  Moreover  Jacob's 
pillar  is  more  than  a  mere  landmark,  for  it  is  anointed, 
just  as  idols  were  in  antiquity,  and  the  pillar  itself,  not 
the  spot  on  which  it  stood,  is  called  "  the  house  of  God,"  - 

'  For  readers  who  do  not  know  Hebrew  it  may  be  noted  that  nosb  and 
7n(ui.feba  are  derived  from  the  same  root  (NSB,  "set  up"  ).  Another  name 
for  the  pillar  or  cairn  is  3^V3,  which  occurs  in  place-names,  both  in  Canaan 
and  among  the  Aramieans  (Nisibis,  "the  pilkus  ") ;  cf.  Lagarde,  Dilduiifj 
der  Nomina,  p.  95. 

»  Gen.  x.xviii.  22. 


188  SACRED    STONES.  lect.  v; 

as  if  the  deity  were  conceived  actually  to  dwell  in  the 
stone,  or  manifest  himself  therein  to  his  worshippers. 
And  this  is  the  conception  which  appears  to  have  been 
associated  with  sacred  stones  everywhere.  When  the 
Arab  daubed  blood  on  the  nosb  his  object  was  to  bring 
the  offering  into  direct  contact  with  the  deity,  and  in  like 
manner  the  practice  of  stroking  the  sacred  stone  with  the 
hand  is  identical  w^ith  the  practice  of  touching  or  stroking 
the  garments  or  beard  of  a  man  in  acts  of  supplication 
before  him.^  Here,  therefore,  the  sacred  stone  is  altar  and 
idol  in  one;  and  so  Porphyry  (De  Ahst.  ii.  56)  in  his 
account  of  the  worship  of  Duma  in  Arabia  expressly 
speaks  of  "  the  altar  which  they  use  as  an  idol."  The 
same  conception  must  have  prevailed  among  the  Canaanites 
before  altar  and  pillar  were  differentiated  from  one  another, 
otherwise  the  pillar  would  have  been  simply  changed  into 
the  more  convenient  form  of  an  altar,  and  there  could  have 
been  no  reason  for  retaining  both.  So  far  as  the  evidence 
from  tradition  and  ritual  goes,  we  can  only  think  of  the 
sacred  stone  as  consecrated  by  the  actual  presence  of  the 
godliead,  so  that  whatever  touched  it  was  brought  into 
immediate  contact  with  the  deity.  How  such  a  concep- 
tion first  obtained  currency  is  a  matter  for  which  no  direct 
evidence  is  available,  and  which  if  settled  at  all  can  be 
settled  only  by  inference  and  conjecture.  At  this  stage  of 
our  enquiry  it  is  not  possible  to  touch  on  this  subject 
except  in  a  provisional  way.  But  some  things  may  be 
said  which  will  at  least  tend  to  make  the  problem  more 
definite. 

Let  us  note  then  that  there  are  two  distinct  points  to 

be  considered — (1)  how  men  came  to  look  on  an  artificial 

structure  as  the  symbol  or  abode  of  the  god,  (2)  why  the 

particular  artificial  structure  is  a  stone  or  a  cairn  of  stones. 

^  Wellhanscn,  p.  105  ;  ibid.  p.  52. 


LECT.  V.  SACRED    STONES.  189 

(1)  In  tree  worship  and  in  the  worship  of  fountains 
adoration  is  paid  to  a  thing  which  man  did  not  make, 
which  has  an  independent  life,  and  properties  such  as  to 
the  savage  imagination  may  well  a})pear  to  be  divine. 
On  the  same  analogy  one  can  understand  how  natural 
rocks  and  boulders,  suited  by  their  size  and  aspect  to  affect 
the  savage  imagination,  have  acquired  in  various  parts  of 
the  world  the  reputation  of  being  animated  objects  with 
power  to  help  and  hurt  man,  and  so  have  come  to  receive 
religious  worship.  But  the  worship  of  artificial  pillars 
and  cairns  of  stones,  chosen  at  random  and  set  up  by  man's 
hand,  is  a  very  different  thing  from  this.  Of  course  not 
the  rudest  savage  believes  that  in  setting  up  a  sacred  stone 
he  is  making  a  new  god ;  what  he  does  believe  is  that  the 
god  comes  into  the  stone,  dwells  in  it  or  animates  it,  so  that 
for  practical  purposes  the  stone  is  thenceforth  an  embodi- 
ment of  the  god,  and  may  be  spoken  of  and  dealt  with  as 
if  it  were  the  god  himself.  But  there  is  an  enormous 
difference  between  worshipping  the  god  in  his  natural 
embodiment,  such  as  a  tree  or  some  notable  rock,  and 
persuading  him  to  come  and  take  for  his  embodiment  a 
structure  set  up  for  him  by  the  worshipper.  From  the 
metaphysical  point  of  view,  which  we  are  always  tempted 
to  apply  to  ancient  religion,  the  worship  of  stocks  and 
stones  prepared  by  man's  hand  seems  to  be  a  much  cruder 
thing  than  the  worship  of  natural  life  as  displayed  in  a 
fountain  or  a  secular  tree ;  but  practically  the  idea  that 
the  godhead  consents  to  be  present  in  a  structure  set 
for  him  by  his  worshippers  implies  a  degree  of  intimacy 
and  permanency  in  the  relations  between  man  and  the 
being  he  adores  which  marks  an  advance  on  the 
worship  of  natural  objects.  It  is  true  that  the  rule 
of  Semitic  worship  is  that  the  artificial  syml)ol  can 
only    be    set    up     in    a    place    already    consecrated    by 


190  SACRED    STONES  LECT.  v. 


tokens  of  the  divine  presence ;  but  the  sacred  stone  is  not 
merely  a  token  that  the  place  is  frequented  by  a  god,  it 
is  also  a  permanent  pledge  that  in  this  place  he  consents 
to  enter  into  stated  relations  with  men  and  accept  their 
service. 

(2)  That  deities  like  those  of  ancient  heathenism,  which 
were  not  supposed  to  be  omnipresent,  and  which  were 
commonly  thought  of  as  having  some  sort  of  corporeal 
nature,  could  enter  into  a  stone  for  the  convenience  of 
their  worshippers,  seems  to  us  a  fundamental  difhculty, 
but  was  hardly  a  difficulty  that  would  be  felt  by  primitive 
man,  who  has  most  elastic  conceptions  of  what  is  possible. 
When  the  principle  is  once  granted  that  the  god  is  willing 
to  meet  with  man  in  the  way  just  described,  there  does 
not  seem  to  be  any  reason  in  the  nature  of  things  for 
choosing  one  form  of  embodiment  rather  than  another. 
When  we  speak  of  an  idol  we  generally  think  of  an  image 
presenting  a  likeness  of  the  god,  because  our  knowledge  of 
heathenism  is  mainly  drawn  from  races  which  had  made 
some  advance  in  the  plastic  arts,  and  used  idols  shaped  in 
such  a  way  as  to  suggest  the  appearance  and  attributes 
which  legend  ascribed  to  each  particular  deity.  But  there 
is  no  reason  in  the  nature  of  things  why  the  physical 
embodiment  which  the  deity  assumes  for  the  convenience 
of  his  worshipper  should  be  a  copy  of  his  proper  form,  and 
in  the  earliest  times  to  which  the  worship  of  sacred  stones 
goes  back  there  was  evidently  no  attempt  to  make  the  idol 
a  simulacrum.  A  cairn  or  rude  stone  pillar  is  not  a 
portrait  of  anything,  and  I  take  it  that  we  shall  go  on 
altogether  false  lines  if  we  try  to  explain  its  selection  as  a 
divine  symbol  by  any  consideration  of  what  it  looks  like. 
Even  when  the  arts  had  made  considerable  progress  the 
Semites  felt  no  need  to  fashion  their  sacred  symbols  inro 
likenesses  of  the  gods.    Melcarth  was  worshipped  at  Tyre  in 


LECT.  V.  AS    DIVINE    SYMBOLS.  191 


the  form  of  two  pillars,^  and  at  the  great  temple  of  Paphos, 
down  to  lioman  times,  the  idol  was  not  an  anthropomorphic 
image  of  Astarte  but  a  conical  stone."  These  antique 
forms  were  not  retained  from  want  of  plastic  skill,  or 
because  there  were  not  well-known  types  on  which  images 
of  the  various  gods  could  be  and  often  were  constructed  ; 
for  we  see  from  the  second  commandment  that  likenesses 
of  things  celestial,  terrestrial  and  aquatic  were  objects  of 
worship  in  Canaan  from  a  very  early  date.  It  was  simply 
not  thought  necessary  that  the  symbol  in  which  the  divinity 
was  present  should  be  like  the  god. 

Phoenician  votive  cippi  were  often  adorned  with  rude 
figures  of  men,  animals  and  the  like,  as  may  be  seen  in  the 
series  of  such  monuments  dedicated  to  Tanith  and  Baal 
Hamman  which  are  depicted  in  the  Corpus  Inscr.  Sem. 
These  figures,  which  are  often  little  better  than  hierogly- 
phics, served,  like  the  accompanying  inscriptions,  to  indicate 
the  meaning  of  the  cippus  and  the  deity  to  which  it  was 
devoted.  An  image  in  like  manner  declares  its  own 
meaning  better  than  a  mere  pillar,  but  the  chief  idol  of  a 
great  sanctuary  did  not  require  to  l)e  explained  in  this 
way ;  its  position  showed  what  it  was  without  either  figure 
or  inscription.  It  is  probable  that  among  the  Pha3nicians 
and  Hebrews,  as  among  the  Arabs  at  the  time  of  Mohammed, 
portrait  images,  such  as  are  spoken  of  in  the  second  com- 
mandment, were  mainly  small  gods  for  private  use.  For 
public  sanctuaries  the  sacred  pillar  or  ashera  sufficed. 

1  Herod.,  ii.  44.  Twin  pillars  stood  also  before  the  temples  of  Paphos  and 
Hierapolis,  and  Solomon  set  up  two  brazen  pillars  before  his  temple  at 
Jerusalem.  As  he  named  them  "The  Stablisher  "  and  "In  him  is  strength," 
they  were  doubtless  symbols  of  Jehovah. 

*  Tac,  Ilist.  ii.  2.  Other  examples  are  the  cone  of  Ela^abahis  at  Eniesa 
(Herodian,  v.  3,  5)  and  that  of  Zeus  Casius.  More  in  Zoega,  Dtolnliscis, 
p.  203.  The  cone  at  Eniesa  was  believed  to  have  fallen  from  heaven,  like  the 
idol  of  Artemis  at  Ephesus  and  other  ancient  and  very  sacred  idols  in 
antiquity. 


192  SACRED    STONES  LECT.  V. 


The  worship  of  sacred  stones  is  often  spoken  of  as  if  it 
belonged  to  a  distinctly  lower  type  of  religion  than  the 
worship  of  images.  It  is  called  fetichism  —  a  merely 
popular  term,  which  conveys  no  precise  idea,  but  is  vaguely 
supposed  to  mean  something  very  savage  and  contemptible. 
And  no  doubt  the  worship  of  unshapen  blocks  is  from  the 
artistic  point  of  view  a  very  poor  thing,  but  from  a  purely 
religious  point  of  view  its  inferiority  to  image  worship  is 
not  so  evident.  The  host  in  the  mass  is  artistically  as 
much  inferior  to  the  Venus  of  Milo  as  a  Semitic  masseba 
was,  but  no  one  will  say  that  mediaeval  Christianity  is 
a  lower  form  of  religion  than  Aphrodite  worship.  What 
seems  to  be  implied  when  sacred  stones  are  spoken  of  as 
fetiches  is  that  they  date  from  a  time  when  stones  were 
regarded  as  the  natural  embodiment  and  proper  form  of 
the  gods,  not  merely  as  the  embodiment  which  they  took 
up  in  order  to  receive  the  homage  of  their  worshippers. 
Such  a  view,  I  venture  to  think,  is  entirely  without 
foundation.  Sacred  stones  are  found  in  all  parts  of  the 
world  and  in  the  worship  of  gods  of  the  most  various  kinds, 
so  that  their  use  must  rest  on  some  cause  which  was 
operative  in  all  primitive  religions.  But  that  all  or  most 
ancient  gods  were  originally  gods  of  stones,  inhabiting 
natural  rocks  or  boulders,  and  that  artificial  cairns  or  pillars 
are  imitations  of  these  natural  objects,  is  against  evidence 
and  quite  incredible.  Among  the  Semites  the  sacred  pillar 
is  universal,  but  the  instances  of  the  worship  of  rocks  and 
stones  in  situ  are  neither  numerous  nor  prominent,  and 
the  idea  of  founding  a  theory  of  the  origin  of  sacred  stones 
in  f^eneral  upon  them  could  hardly  occur  to  any  one,  except 
on  the  perfectly  gratuitous  supposition  that  the  idol  or 
symbol  must  necessarily  be  like  the  god.^ 

1  The  stone  of  al-Lat  at  Tfuf,  in  which  the  goddess  was  supposed  to  dwell, 
is  identified  by  local  tradition  with  a  mass  which  seems  to  be  a  natural  block 


LECT.  V.  AND    FETICH   WORSHIP.  103 

The  notion  that  the  sacred  stone  is  a  simulacrum  of 
the  god  seems  also  to  be  excluded  by  the  observation  that 
several  pillars  may  stand  together  as  representatives  of  a 
single  deity.  Here,  indeed,  the  evidence  must  be  sifted 
with  some  care,  for  a  god  and  a  goddess  were  often 
worshipped  together,  and  then  each  would  have  a  pillar.^ 
But  this  kind  of  explanation  does  not  cover  all  the  cases. 
In  the  Arabian  rite  described  in  Herod,  iii.  8,  two  deities 
are  invoked,  but  seven  sa  credstones  are  anointed  with 
blood,  and  a  plurality  of  sacred  stones  round  which  the 
worship})ers  circled  in  a  single  act  of  worship  are  frequently 
spoken  of  in  Arabian  poetry.'^  Similarly  in  Canaan  the 
place  -  name    Anathoth    means    images   of    'Anath   in   the 

in  situ,  though  not  one  of  unusual  size  or  form.  See  my  Kinship,  p.  293,  and 
Doughty,  ii.  515.  At  'Okfiz  the  sacred  circle  was  performed  round  rocks 
{sohur,  Yficfit,  iii.  705),  presunial)ly  the  remarkable  group  which  I  described 
in  1880  in  a  letter  to  the  ScoLsmaii  newspaper.  "  In  the  S.E.  corner  of  the 
small  plain,  which  is  barely  two  miles  across,  rises  a  hill  of  loose  granite 
blocks,  crowned  by  an  enormous  pillar  standing  quite  erect  and  flanked  by 
lower  masses.  I  do  not  tliink  that  this  pillar  can  be  less  than  50  or  GO  feet 
in  height,  and  its  extraordinary  aspect,  standing  between  two  lesser  guards 
on  either  side,  is  the  first  thing  that  strikes  the  eye  on  nearing  the  plain." 
The  rock  of  Dusares,  referred  to  by  Steph.  Byz.,  is  perliaps  the  cliff  witli  a 
waterfall  which  has  been  already  mentioned  {supra,  p.  153),  and  so  may  be 
compared  with  the  rock  at  Kadesh  from  which  the  fountain  gushed.  The 
.sanctity  of  rocks  from  whicli  water  flows,  or  of  rocks  that  form  a  sacred  grotto, 
plainly  cannot  be  used  to  exi)lain  the  origin  of  sacred  cairns  and  pillars 
which  have  neither  water  nor  cavern. 

That  the  phrase  "Rock  of  Israel,"  applied  to  Jehovah,  has  anything  to  do 
with  stone  worship  may  legitimately  be  doubted.  The  use  of  baetylia,  or 
small  portable  stones  to  whicli  magical  life  was  ascribed,  hardly  belongs  to 
tlie  present  argument.  The  idol  Abnil  at  Nisibis  is  simply  "the  Cippus  of 
El  "  (Assem.  i.  27). 

1  Cf.  Kinship,  p.  293  sqq.  p.  262.  Whether  the  two  ghari  at  Hira  and 
Faid  (Wellh.,  p.  40)  belong  to  a  pair  of  gods,  or  are  a  double  image  of  one 
deity,  like  the  twin  pillars  of  Heracles-Melcarth  at  T}Te,  cannot  be  decided. 
Wellhausen  inclines  to  the  latter  view,  citing  Hamdsa,  190.  15.  But  in 
Arabic  idiom  the  two  'Ozzas  may  mean  al-'Ozza  and  her  companion  goddess 
al-Lilt.     Mr.  C.  Lyall  suggests  the  reading  gharlyaini. 

-  Wullh.,  Hiid.  p.  99.  The  poets  often  seem  to  identify  the  god  with 
one  of  the  stones,  as  al-'Ozzii  was  identified  with  one  of  the  tliree  trees  at 
Naklila.  The  ansah  stand  beside  the  god  {Tclj.  iii.  560,  1.  1)  or  round  him, 
which  probably  means  that  the  idol  proper  stood  in  the  midst.     In  the  verse 


104  OEIGIN"    OF 


LECT.   V. 


plural ;  and  at  Gilgal  there  were  twelve  sacred  pillars 
according  to  the  number  of  the  twelve  tribes,^  as  at  Sinai 
twelve  pillars  were  erected  at  the  covenant  sacrifice.^ 
Twin  pillars  of  Melcarth  have  already  been  noticed  at 
Tyre,  and  are  familiar  to  us  as  the  "  pillars  of  Hercules  " 
in  connection  w4th  the  Straits  of  Gibraltar, 

Another  view  taken  of  sacred  pillars  and  cippi  is  that 
they  are  images,  not  of  the  deity,  but  of  bodily  organs  taken 
as  emblems  of  particular  powers  or  attributes  of  deity, 
especially  of  life-giving  and  reproductive  power.  I  will 
say  something  of  this  theory  in  a  note ;  but  as  an  explana- 
tion of  the  origin  of  sacred  stones  it  has  not  even  a  show 
of  plausibility.  Men  did  not  begin  by  worshipping 
emblems  of  divine  powers,  they  brought  their  homage  and 
offerings  to  the  god  himself.  If  the  god  was  already  con- 
ceived as  present  in  the  stone,  it  was  a  natural  exercise  of 
the  artistic  faculty  to  put  something  on  the  stone  to  indi- 
cate the  fact ;  and  this  something,  if  the  god  was  anthro- 
pomorphically  conceived,  might  either  be  a  human  figure, 
or  merely  an  indication  of  important  parts  of  the  human 
figure.  At  Tabala  in  Arabia,  for  instance,  a  sort  of  crown 
was  sculptured  on  the  stone  of  Al-Lat  to  mark  her  head. 
Tn  like  manner  other  parts  of  the  body  may  be  rudely 
designated,  particularly  such  as  distinguish  sex.  But  that 
the  sacred  cippus,  as  such,  is  not  a  sexual  emblem  is 
plain    from     the    fact    that     exactly    the    same     kind    of 

of  al-Farazdac,  Agh.  xix.  3,  1.  30,  to  which  Wellhausen  calls  attention,  the 
Oxford  MS.  of  the  Nacaid  and  that  of  the  late  Spitta-Bey  read,  'aid  hlna  Id 
f,uhyd  'l-banutu  iva-idhhumu  'tikufnn  'aid  'l-ansdbi  haivla  'l-muihuuwari,  and 
the  scholia  explain  al-miidatvwar  as  sanam  yaduruna  hawlahu.  In  the 
line  of  al-A'sha  (Ibn  Hisham,  256.  8  ;  Morg.  Forsch.  p.  258),  the  god  who  is 
himself  ma?i.sw6,  "set  up  as  a  pillar,"  is  yet  called  " dliu  'l-nusub."  It  is 
impossible  to  believe  that  this  distinction  between  one  stone  and  the  rest  is 
primitive. 

1  Josh.  iv.  20.  These  stones  are  probably  identical  with  the  stone-idols 
(A.V.  "quarries")  of  Judg.  iii.  19,  26. 

'^  Exod.  xxiv.  4. 


LECT.  V.  SACRED   STONES.  195 

pillar  or   cone  is    used   to    represent    gods  and   goddesses 
indifferently.^ 

On  a  review  of  all  these  theories  it  seems  most  probable 
that  the  choice  of  a  pillar  or  cairn  as  the  primitive  idol 
was  not  dictated  by  any  other  consideration  than  con- 
venience for  ritual  purjioses.  The  stone  or  stone-heap  was 
a  convenient  mark  of  the  proper  place  of  sacrifice,  and  at 
the  same  time,  if  the  deity  consented  to  be  present  at  it, 
provided  the  means  for  carrying  out  the  ritual  of  the  sacri- 
ficial blood.  Further  than  this  it  does  not  seem  possible 
to  go,  till  we  know  why  it  was  thought  so  essential  to 
bring  the  blood  into  immediate  contact  with  the  god 
adored.  This  question  belongs  to  the  subject  of  sacrifice, 
which  I  propose  to  commence  in  the  next  lecture. 

^  See  Additional  Note  E,  Phallic  Symbols. 


LECTURE   VI. 

SACRIFICE PRELIMINARY    SURVEY. 

We  have  seen  in  the  course  of  the  last  lecture  that  the 
practices  of  ancient  religion  require  a  fixed  meeting-place 
between  the  worshippers  and  their  god.  The  choice  of 
such  a  place  is  determined  in  the  first  instance  by  the 
consideration  that  certain  spots  are  the  natural  haunts  of 
a  deity,  and  therefore  holy  ground.  But  for  most  rituals 
it  is  not  sufficient  that  the  worshipper  should  present  his 
service  on  holy  ground ;  it  is  necessary  that  he  should 
come  into  contact  with  the  god  himself,  and  this  he 
believes  himself  to  do  when  he  directs  his  homage  to  a 
natural  object,  like  a  tree  or  a  sacred  fountain,  which 
is  believed  to  be  the  actual  seat  of  the  god  and  embodi- 
ment of  a  divine  life,  or  when  he  draws  near  to  an 
artificial  mark  of  the  immediate  presence  of  the  deity. 
In  the  oldest  forms  of  Semitic  religion  this  mark  is  a 
sacred  stone,  which  is  at  once  idol  and  altar;  in  later 
times  the  idol  and  the  altar  stand  side  by  side,  and  the 
original  functions  of  the  sacred  stone  are  divided  between 
them ;  the  idol  represents  the  presence  of  the  god,  and  the 
altar  serves  to  receive  the  gifts  of  the  worshipper.  Both 
are  necessary  to  constitute  a  complete  sanctuary,  because 
a  complete  act  of  worship  implies  not  merely  that  the 
worshipper  comes  into  the  presence  of  his  god  with  gestures 
of  homage  and  words  of  prayer,  but  also  that  he  lays  before 
the  deity  some  material  oblation.     In  antiquity  an  act  of 


LECT.   VI. 


SACRIFICE.  197 


worship  was  a  formal  operation  iu  which  certain  prescribed 
rites  and  ceremonies  must  be  duly  observed.  And  among 
these  the  oblation  at  the  altar  had  so  central  a  place  that 
among  the  Greeks  and  Eomans  the  words  lepovpyia  and 
sacrijiciuin,  which  in  their  primary  application  denote 
any  action  within  the  sphere  of  things  sacred  to  the  gods, 
and  so  cover  the  whole  field  of  ritual,  were  habitually  used, 
like  our  English  word  sacrifice,  of  those  oblations  at  the 
altar  round  which  all  other  parts  of  ritual  turned.  In 
English  idiom  there  is  a  further  tendency  to  narrow  the 
word  sacrifice  to  such  oblations  as  involve  the  slaughter 
of  a  victim.  In  the  Authorised  Version  of  the  Bible 
"  sacrifice  and  oflering "  is  the  usual  translation  of  the 
Hebrew  zihah  uminha,  tliat  is  "  bloody  and  bloodless 
oblations."  For  the  purposes  of  the  present  discussion, 
however,  it  seems  best  to  include  both  kinds  of  oblation 
under  the  term  "  sacrifice ; "  for  a  comprehensive  term  is 
necessary,  and  the  word  "  offering,"  which  naturally  sug- 
gests itself  as  an  alternative,  is  somewhat  too  wide,  as  it 
may  properly  include  not  only  sacrifices  but  votive  offerings, 
of  treasure  images  and  the  like,  which  form  a  distinct 
class  from  offerings  at  the  altar. 

Why  sacrifice  is  the  typical  form  of  all  complete  acts 
of  worship  in  the  antique  religions,  and  what  the  sacrificial 
act  means,  is  an  involved  and  difficult  problem.  The 
problem  does  not  belong  to  any  one  religion,  for  sacrifice 
is  equally  important  among  all  early  peoples  in  all  parts 
of  the  world  where  religious  ritual  has  reached  any  con- 
siderable development.  Here,  therefore,  we  have  to  deal 
with  an  institution  that  must  have  been  shaped  by  the 
action  of  general  causes,  operating  very  witlely  and  under 
conditions  that  were  common  in  primitive  times  to  all 
races  of  mankind.  To  construct  a  theory  of  sacrifice 
exclusively  on  the  Semitic  evidence  would  be  uuscientitic 


JIA^ 


198  THE    LEVITICAL 


LECT.   VI. 


and  misleading,  but  for  the  present  purpose  it  is  right  to 
put  the  facts  attested  for  the  Semitic  peoples  in  the  fore- 
ground, and  to  call  in  the  sacrifices  of  other  nations  to 
confirm  or  modify  the  conclusions  to  which  we  are  led. 
For  some  of  the  main  aspects  of  the  subject  the  Semitic 
evidence  is  very  full  and  clear,  for  others  it  is  fragmentary 
and  unintelligible  without  help  from  what  is  known  about 
other  rituals. 

Unfortunately  the  only  system  of  Semitic  sacrifice  of 
which  we  possess  a  full  account  is  that  of  the  second 
temple  at  Jerusalem ;  ^  and  though  the  ritual  of  Jerusalem 
as  described  in  the  Book  of  Leviticus  is  undoubtedly  based 
on  very  ancient  tradition,  going  back  to  a  time  when  there 
was  no  substantial  difference,  in  point  of  form,  between 
Hebrew  sacrifices  and  those  of  the  surrounding  nations,  the 
system  as  we  have  it  dates  from  a  time  when  sacrifice  was 
no  longer  the  sum  and  substance  of  worship.  In  the  long 
years  of  Babylonian  exile  the  Israelites  who  remained  true 
to  the  faith  of  Jehovah  had  learned  to  draw  nigh  to  their 
God  without  the  aid  of  sacrifice  and  offering,  and,  when 
they  returned  to  Canaan,  they  did  not  return  to  the  old 
type  of  religion.     They  built  an  altar  indeed,  and  restored 

^  The  detailed  ritual  laws  of  the  Pentateuch  belong  to  the  post-exilic 
document  commonly  called  the  Priestly  Code,  which  was  adopted  as  the 
law  of  Israel's  religion  at  Ezra's  reformation  (444  B.C.).  To  the  Priestly 
Code  belong  the  Book  of  Leviticus,  together  with  the  cognate  parts  of  the 
adjacent  Books,  Exod.  xxv.-xxxi.,  xxxv.-xl.,  and  Numb,  i.-x.,  xv.-xix., 
xxv.-xxxvi.  (with  some  inconsiderable  exceptions).  With  the  Code  is 
associated  an  account  of  the  sacred  history  from  Adam  to  Joshua,  and  some 
ritual  matter  is  found  in  the  historical  sections  of  the  work,  especially  in 
Exod.  xii.,  where  the  law  of  the  Passover  is  mainly  priestly,  and  represents 
post-exilic  usage.  The  law  of  Deuteronomy  (seventh  cent.  B.C.)  and  the 
older  codes  of  Exod.  xx.-xxiii.,  xxxiv.,  have  little  to  say  about  the  rules  of 
ritual,  which  in  old  times  were  matters  of  priestly  tradition  and  not  incor- 
porated in  a  law-book.  A  just  view  of  the  sequence  and  dates  of  the  several 
parts  of  the  Pentateuch  is  essential  to  the  historical  study  of  Hebrew  religion. 
Readers  to  whom  this  subject  is  new  may  refer  to  Wellhausen's  Prolegomena 
(Eng.  Tr.,  Edin.  1883),  and  to  the  article  "Pentateuch,"  Encyc.  Brit.,  9th 
ed,,  or  to  my  Old  Test,  in  the  Jewish  Church  (Edin.  1881). 


i.KCT.  VI.  SACRIFICES.  199 

its  ritual  on  the  lines  of  old  tradition,  so  far  as  these  could 
be  reconciled  with  the  teaching  of  the  prophets  and  the 
Peuteronomic  law — especially  with  the  principle  that  there 
was  but  one  sanctuary  at  which  sacrifice  could  be  accept- 
ably offered.  But  tliis  principle  itself  was  entirely 
destructive  of  the  old  importance  of  sacrifice,  as  the  stated 
means  of  converse  between  God  and  man.  In  the  old 
time  every  town  had  its  altar,  and  a  visit  to  the  local 
sanctuary  was  the  easy  and  obvious  way  of  consecrating 
every  important  act  of  life.  No  such  interweaving  of 
sacrificial  service  with  everyday  religion  was  possible 
under  the  new  law,  nor  was  anything  of  the  kind  at- 
tempted. The  worship  of  the  second  temple  was  an 
antiquarian  resuscitation  of  forms  which  had  lost  their 
intimate  connection  with  the  national  life,  and  therefore 
had  lost  the  greater  part  of  their  original  significance. 
The  Book  of  Leviticus,  with  all  its  fulness  of  ritual  detail, 
does  not  furnish  any  clear  idea  of  the  place  which  each 
kind  of  altar  service  held  in  the  old  religion,  when  all 
worship  took  the  form  of  sacrifice.  And  in  some  parti- 
culars there  is  reason  to  believe  that  the  desire  to  avoid 
ail  heathenism,  the  necessity  for  giving  expression  to  new 
religious  ideas,  and  the  growing  tendency  to  keep  the 
people  as  far  as  possible  from  the  altar  and  make  sacrifice 
the  business  of  a  priestly  caste,  had  introduced  into  the 
ritual  features  unknown  to  more  ancient  practice. 

The  three  main  types  of  sacrifice  recognised  by  the 
Levitical  law  are  the  whole  burnt  -  offering  ( 'ola),  the 
sacrifice  followed  by  a  meal  of  which  the  flesh  of  the  victim 
formed  the  staple  (shdem,  zdhah),  and  the  sin  -  offering 
(Jiattcdh),  with  an  obscure  variety  of  the  last  named  called 
asham  (A.V.  "  trespass-offering  ").  Of  these  'ola  and  z<<ba/i 
are  frequently  mentioned  in  the  older  literature,  and  they 
are   often   spoken    of   together,   as  if  all  animal  sacrifices 


200  THE   MATERIAL  lect.  vi. 


fell  under  one  or  the  other  head.  The  use  of  sacrifice  as 
an  atonement  for  sin  is  also  recognised  in  the  old  literature, 
especially  in  the  case  of  the  burnt-offering,  but  there  is 
little  or  no  trace  of  a  special  kind  of  ofi'ering  appropriated 
for  this  purpose  before  the  time  of  Ezekiel.^  The  formal 
distinctions  with  regard  to  Hebrew  sacrifices  that  can  be 
clearly  made  out  from  the  pre  -  exilic  literature  appear 
to  be — 

(1)  The  distinction  between  animal  and  vegetable 
oblations  (zdhah  and  minim). 

(2)  The  distinction  between  offerings  that  were  consumed 
by  fire  and  such  as  were  merely  set  forth  on  the  sacred 
table  (the  shewbread). 

(3)  The  distinction  between  sacrifices  in  which  the 
consecrated  gift  is  wholly  made  over  to  the  god,  to  be 
consumed  on  the  altar  or  otherwise  disposed  of  in  his 
service,  and  those  at  which  the  god  and  his  worshippers 
partake  together  in  the  consecrated  thing.  To  the  latter 
class  belong  the  zehahim,  or  ordinary  animal  sacrifices,  in 
which  a  victim  is  slain,  its  blood  poured  out  at  the  altar, 
and  the  fat  of  the  intestines  with  certain  other  pieces 
burned,  while  the  greater  part  of  the  flesh  is  left  to  the 
offerer  to  form  the  material  of  a  sacrificial  banquet. 

These  three  distinctions,  which  are  undoubtedly  ancient, 
and  applicable  to  the  sacrifices  of  other  Semitic  nations, 
suggest  three  heads  under  which  a  preliminary  survey  of 
the  subject  may  be  conveniently  arranged.  But  not  till 
we  reach  the  third  head  shall  we  find  ourselves  brought 
face  to  face  with  the  deeper  aspects  of  the  problem  of  the 
origin  and  significance  of  sacrificial  worship. 

^  See  Wellhausen,  Prolegomena,  chap.  ii.  The  Hebrew  designations  of 
the  species  of  sacrifices  are  to  be  compared  with  those  on  the  Carthaginian 
tables  of  fees  paid  to  priests  for  tlie  various  kinds  of  offerings ;  C.  I.  S. 
Nos.  165,  167  f^qq.,  but  tlie  information  given  in  these  is  so  fragmentary 
that  it  is  difficult  to  make  much  ot  it.     See  below,  p.  219  w. 


LECT.  VI.  OF   SACRIFICE.  201 


1.   The  material  of  sacrifice.     The  division  of  sacrifices 
into  animal  and  vegetable  offerings  involves  the   principle 
that  sacrifices — as  distinct  from  votive  offerings  of  garments, 
weapons,    treasure  and    the  like — are  drawn  from  edible 
substances,  and  indeed  from  such  substances  as  form  the 
ordinary  staple  of   human   food.       The   last  statement   is 
strictly  true   of   the    Levitical  ritual ;  but,  so   far  as   the 
flesh  of  animals  is  concerned,  it  was  subject,  even  in  the 
later  heathen  rituals,  to  certain  rare  but  important  excep- 
tions, unclean  or  sacred  animals,  whose  flesh  was  ordinarily 
forbidden  to  men,  being  offered  and  eaten  sacramentally  on 
very  solemn   occasions.      AYe  shall  see  by  and   by  that  in 
the  earliest  times  these  extraordinary  sacrifices  had  a  very 
great  importance  in  ritual,  and  that  on  them  depends  the 
theory  of  the  earliest  sacrificial  meals;  but,  as  regards  later 
times,  the  Hebrew  sacrifices  are  sufficiently  typical  of  the 
ordinary  usage  of  the  Semites  generally.      The  four-footed 
animals  from  which  the  Levitical  law  allows  victims  to  be 
selected,  are  the  ox  .the  sheep  and  the  goat,  that  is,  the 
"  clean  "  domestic  quadrupeds  which  men  were  allowed  to 
eat.     The  same  quadrupeds  are  named  upon  the  Cartha- 
ginian inscriptions  that  give  the  tariff  of  sacrificial  fees  to 
be  paid  at   the  temple,^  and   in   Lucian's   account  of  the 
Syrian  ritual  at  Hierapolis."     The  Israelites  neither  ate  nor 
sacrificed  camels,  but   among   the  Arabs    the   camel   was 
common  food  and  a  common  offering.      The  swine,  on  the 
other  hand,  which  was   commonly  sacrificed  and  eaten  in 
Greece,  was  forbidden  food  to  all  the  Semites,^  and  occurs 
as  a  sacrifice  only  in  certain  exceptional  rites  of  the  kind 
already  alluded  to.       Deer,  gazelles   and   other  kinds   of 
game  were  eaten  by  the  Hebrews,  but  not  sacrificed,  and 
from  Deut.  xii.    IG   we  may  conclude   that  this  was  an 

1  C.  I.  S.  Nos.  165,  167.  -  D'Ci  %n«,  liv. 

3  Lucian,  ul  sup.  (Syrians)  ;  Sozoiiieu,  vi.  38  (all  Saracens). 


202  THE   MATERIAL  lect.  vi. 

ancient  rule.  Among  the  Arabs,  in  like  manner,  a  gazelle 
was  regarded  as  an  imperfect  oblation,  a  shabby  substitute 
for  a  sheep.^  As  regards  birds,  the  Levitical  law  admits 
pigeons  and  turtle-doves,  but  only  as  holocausts  and  in 
certain  purificatory  ceremonies.^  Birds  seem  also  to  be 
mentioned  in  the  Carthacrinian  sacrificial  lists ;  what  is 
said  of  them  is  very  obscure,  but  it  would  appear  that  they 
might  be  used  either  for  ordinary  sacrifices  (shdem  kalU) 
or  for  special  purposes  piacular  and  oracular.  That  the 
quail  was  sacrificed  to  the  Tyrian  Baal  appears  from 
Athenseus,  ix.  47,  p.  3  9  2d 

Fish  again  were  eaten  by  the  Israelites,  but  not 
sacrificed ;  among  their  heathen  neighbours,  on  the 
contrary,  fish — or  at  least  certain  kinds  of  fish — were 
forbidden  food,  and  were  sacrificed  only  in  exceptional 
cases.^ 

Among  the  Hebrew  offerings  drawn  from  the  vegetable 
kingdom,  meal  ^  wine  and  oil  take  the  chief  place,*  and 
these  were  also  the  chief  vegetable  constituents  of  man's 

1  Wellh.,  p.  112;  Harith,  Mo'all.  69;  especially  Lisan,  vi.  211.  The 
reason  of  this  rule,  and  certain  exceptions,  will  appear  in  the  sequel. 

-  Lev.  i.  14,  xii.  6,  8,  xiv.  22,  xv.  14,  29  ;  Numb.  vi.  10.  Two  birds, 
of  which  one  is  slain  and  its  blood  used  for  lustration,  appear  also  in  the 
ritual  for  cleansing  a  leper,  or  a  house  that  has  been  afifected  with  leprosy 
(Lev.  xiv.  4  sq.,  49  sq.).  Further,  the  turtle-dove  and  nestling  (pigeon) 
appear  in  an  ancient  covenant  ceremony  (Gen.  xv.  9  sqq.).  The  fact  that 
the  dove  was  not  used  by  the  He^>^ews  for  any  ordinaiy  sacrifice,  involving  a 
sacrificial  meal,  can  hardly  be,  in  its  origin,  independent  of  the  sacrosanct 
character  ascribed  to  this  bird  in  the  religion  of  the  heathen  Semites.  The 
Syrians  would  not  eat  doves,  and  their  very  touch  made  a  man  unclean  for 
a  day  {Dea  Syria,  liv. ).  In  Palestine  also  the  dove  was  sacred  with  the 
Phoenicians  and  Philistines,  and  on  this  superstition  is  based  the  common 
Jewish  accusation  against  the  Samaritans,  that  they  were  worshippers  of  the 
dove  (see  for  all  this  Bochart,  Hierozoicon,  II.  i.  1).  Nay,  sacred  doves  that 
may  not  be  harmed  are  found  even  at  Mecca.  In  legal  times  the  dove  was 
of  course  a  "clean"  bird  to  the  Hebrews,  but  it  is  somewhat  remarkable 
that  we  never  read  of  it  in  the  Old  Testament  as  an  article  of  diet — not  even 
in  1  Kings  v.  2  sqq.  (A.V.  iv,  22  sqq.) — though  it  is  now  one  of  tlie 
commonest  table-birds  all  over  the  East. 

3  See  below,  p.  274.  *  Cf.  Micah  vi.  7  with  Lev.  ii.  1  sqq. 


LECT.  VI.  OF   SACRIFICE.  203 

daily  food.^  In  the  lands  of  the  olive,  oil  takes  the  place  that 
butter  and  other  animal  fats  hold  among  northern  nations, 
and  accordingly  among  the  Hebrews,  and  seemingly  also 
among  the  Phanicians,^  it  was  customary  to  mingle  oil 
with  the  cereal  oblation  before  it  was  placed  upon  tlie 
altar,  in  conformity  with  the  usage  at  ordinary  meals. 
In  like  manner  no  cereal  offering  was  complete  without 
salt,'  which,  for  physiological  reasons,  is  a  necessary  of  life 
to  all  who  use  a  cereal  diet,  though  among  nations  that 
live  exclusively  on  flesh  and  milk  it  is  not  indispensable 
and  is  often  dispensed  with.  Wine,  which  as  Jotham's 
parable  has  it,  "  cheereth  gods  and  men "  *  was  added  to 
whole  burnt-otlerings  and  to  the  oblation  of  victims  of 
whose  flesh  the  worshippers  partook.^  The  sacrificial  use 
of  wine,  without  which  no  feast  was  complete,  seems  to 
have  been  universal  wherever  the  grape  was  known,^  and 
even  penetrated  to  Arabia,  where  wine  was  a  scarce  and 
costly  luxury  imported  from  abroad.  Milk,  on  the  other 
hand,  though  one  of  the  commonest  articles  of  food  among 
the  Israelites,  has  no  place  in  Hebrew  sacrifice,  but 
libations  of  milk  were  offered  by  the  Arabs,  and  also  at 
Carthage.^  Their  absence  among  the  Hebrews  may 
perhaps  be  explained  by  the  rule  of  Ex.  xxiii.  18,  Lev. 
ii.  11,  which  excludes  all  ferments  from  presentation  at 
the  altar ;  for  in  hot  climates  milk  ferments  rapidly  and 
is  generally  eaten  sour.®    The  same  principle  covers   the 

^  Psalm  civ.  14  aq. 

*In  C.  I.  S.  No.  165, 1.  14,  the  word  ^^2  is  to  be  interpreted  by  the  aid  of 
Lev.  vii.  10,  and  understood  of  bread  or  meal  moistened  with  oil. 
'Lev.  ii.  13.  •*Jiulg.  ix.  13.  *  Numb.  xv.  5. 

*  An  exception,  Athen.  xv.  48,  in  Greek  sacrifices  to  the  sun,  where  the 
libation  was  of  honey. 

MVellh.,  p.  Ill  sq.;  C.  I.  S.  No.  165,  1.  14,  No.  167,  1.  10. 

*  The  rule  against  offering  fermented  tilings  on  the  altar  was  not  observed 
in  northern  Israel  in  all  forms  of  sacrifice  (Amos  iv.  5),  and  traces  of  greater 
freedom  in  this  respect  appear  also  in  Lev.  vii.  13,  xxiii.  17.  It  is  possible 
that  in  its  oldest  form  the  legal  prohibitiou  of  leaven  applied  only  to  the 


204  THE   MATERIAL  lect.  vi. 


prohibition  of  "  honey,"  ^  which  term,  like  the  modern 
Arabic  dibs,  appears  to  include  fruit  juice  inspissated  by 
boiling — a  very  important  article  of  food  in  modern  and 
presumably  in  ancient  Palestine.  Fruit  in  its  natural 
state,  however,  was  offered  at  Carthage,^  and  was  probably 
admitted  by  the  Hebrews  in  ancient  times.^  Among  the 
Hebrews  vegetable  or  cereal  oblations  were  sometimes 
presented  by  themselves,  especially  in  the  form  of 
first-fruits,  but  the  commonest  use  of  them  was  as  an 
accompaniment  to  an  animal  sacrilice.     When  the  Hebrew 

passover,  to  which  Ex.  xxiii.  18,  xxxiv.  25,  specially  refer.  In  this 
connection  the  prohibition  of  leaven  is  closely  associated  with  the  rule  that 
the  fat  and  flesh  must  not  remain  over  till  the  morning.  For  we  shall  find 
by  and  by  that  a  similar  rule  applied  to  certain  Saracen  sacrifices  nearly 
akin  to  the  passover,  which  were  even  eaten  raw,  and  had  to  be  entirely 
consumed  before  the  sun  rose.  In  this  case  the  idea  was  that  the  efficacy 
of  the  sacrifice  lay  in  the  living  flesh  and  blood  of  the  victim.  Everytliing 
of  the  nature  of  putrefaction  was  therefore  to  be  avoided,  and  the  connection 
between  leaven  and  putrefaction  is  obvious. 

The  only  positive  law  against  the  sacrificial  use  of  milk  is  that  in  Ex. 
xxiii.  19,  xxxiv.  26,  "Thou  shalt  not  seethe  a  kid  in  its  mother's  milk." 
Mother's  milk  is  simply  goat's  milk,  which  was  that  generally  used  (Prov. 
xxvii.  27),  and  flesh  seethed  in  milk  is  still  a  common  Arabian  dish  ;  sour 
milk  is  specified  as  the  kind  employed  in  P.  E.  F.  Qu.  St.  1888,  p.  188. 
The  context  of  the  passages  in  Exodus  shows  that  some  ancient  form  of  sacri- 
fice is  referred  to  ;  cf.  Judg.  vi.  19,  where  we  have  a  holocaust  of  sodilen  flesh. 
A  sacrificial  gift  sodden  in  sour  milk  would  evidently  be  of  the  nature  of 
fermented  food,  and  on  this  principle  I  have  formerly  accounted  for  its  prohibi- 
tion (0.  T.  in  J.  Ch.  p.  438).  But  I  do  not  now  feel  sure  that  this  goes 
to  the  root  of  the  matter  ;  for  there  seem  to  be  indications  that  many  primi- 
tive peoples  regard  milk  as  a  kind  of  equivalent  for  blood,  and  as  containing 
a  sacred  life.  Thus  to  eat  a  kid  seethed  in  its  mother's  milk  might  be  taken 
as  equivalent  to  eating  "with  the  blood,"  and  be  forbidden  to  the  Hebrews 
along  with  the  bloody  sacraments  of  the  heathen,  of  which  more  hereafter. 

^Lev.  ii.  11.  2(77,5-^0.166. 

-The  term  hillidlm,  applied  in  Lev.  xix.  24  to  the  consecrated  fruit 
borne  by  a  new  tree  in  its  fourth  year,  is  applied  in  Judg.  ix.  27  to  the 
Canaanite  vintage  feast  at  the  sanctuary.  The  Cartliaginian  fruit-offering 
consisted  of  a  branch  bearing  fruit,  like  the  "  ethrog  "  of  the  modern  Jewish 
feast  of  Tabernacles.  The  use  of  "goodly  fruits  "  at  this  festival  is  ordained 
in  Lev.  xxiii.  40,  but  their  destination  is  not  specified.  In  Carthage, 
though  the  inscription  that  s])eaks  of  the  rite  is  fragmentary,  it  seems  to 
be  clear  that  the  fruit  was  offered  at  the  altar,  for  incense  is  mentioned 
with  it ;  and  this,  no  doubt,  is  the  original  sense  of  the  Hebrew  rite  also. 


LECT.  VI.  OF   SACRIFICE.  205 

ate  flesh,  he  ate  bread  with  it  and  drank  wine,  and  when 
he  offered  flesh  on  the  table  of  his  God,  it  was  natural  that 
he  should  add  to  it  the  same  concomitants  wliich  were 
necessary  to  make  up  a  comfortable  and  generous  meal. 

Of  these  various  oblations  animal  sacrifices  are  by  far 
the  most  important  in  all  the  Semitic  countries.  They 
are  in  fact  the  typical  sacrifice,  so  that  among  the 
Phoenicians  the  word  z^hali,  whicli  properly  means  a 
slaughtered  victim,  is  applied  even  to  offerings  of  bread 
and  oil.^  That  cereal  offerings  have  but  a  secondary 
place  in  ritual  is  not  imintelligible  in  connection  with 
the  history  of  the  Semitic  race.  Tor  all  the  Semites 
were  originally  nomadic,  and  the  ritual  of  the  nomad 
Arabs  and  the  settled  Canaanites  has  so  many  points  in 
common  that  there  can  be  no  question  that  the  main 
lines  of  sacrificial  worship  were  fixed  before  any  part  of 
the  Semitic  stock  had  learned  agriculture  and  adopted 
cereal  food  as  its  ordinary  diet.  It  must  be  observed 
however  that  animal  food — or  at  least  the  flesh  of  domestic 
animals,  which  are  the  only  class  of  victims  admitted 
among  the  Semites  as  ordinary  and  regular  sacrifices — 
was  not  a  common  article  of  diet  even  among  the 
nomad  Arabs.  The  everyday  food  of  the  nomad  con- 
sisted of  milk,  of  game,  when  he  could  get  it,  and  to  a 
limited  extent  of  dates  and  meal — the  latter  for  the  most 
part  being  attainable  only  by  purchase  or  robbery.  Flesh 
of  domestic  animals  was  eaten  only  as  a  luxury  or  in 
times   of   famine.^       If    therefore  the   sole   principle    that 

1  C.  /.  S.  No.  165,  1.  12  ;  167,  1.  9.  In  the  context  ^v  can  hardly  mean 
game,  but  must  be  taken,  a.s  in  Josli.  ix.  11  sqq.,  of  cereal  food,  the  ordinary 
"  provision  "  of  agricultural  peoples. 

^Seethe  old  narratives  passim,  and  compare  Doughty,  i.  325  sq.  The 
statement  of  Frankel,  Fremflworter,  p.  31,  that  the  Arabs  lived  mainly  on 
llcsli,  overlooks  the  importance  of  milk  as  an  article  of  diet  among  all  the 
pastoral  tribes,  and  must  also  be  taken  with  the  (jualification  that  the  flesh  used 
as  ordinary  food  was  that  of  wild  beasts  taken  in  hunting.     On  this  point 


206  SACRIFICE   AS   THE  lect.  vr. 

governed  the  choice  of  the  material  of  sacrifices  had  been 
that  they  must  consist  of  human  food,  milk  and  not  flesh 
would  have  had  the  leading  place  in  nomad  ritual,  whereas 
its  real  place  is  exceedingly  subordinate.  To  remove  this 
difficulty  it  may  be  urged  that,  as  sacrifice  is  food  offered 
to  the  gods,  it  ought  naturally  to  be  of  the  best  and  most 
luxurious  kind  that  can  be  attained ;  but  on  this  principle 
it  is  not  easy  to  see  why  game  should  be  excluded,  for  a 
"azelle  is  not  worse  food  than  an  old  camel.^  The  true 
solution  of  the  matter  lies  in  another  direction,  and  cannot 
be  given  till  we  come  to  look  at  the  nature  and  significance 
of  the  sacrificial  feast.  But  that  this  is  the  quarter  in 
which  the  solution  must  be  sought  may,  I  think,  be 
made  probable  from  the  facts  already  before  us.  Among 
the  Hebrews  no  sacrificial  meal  was  provided  for  the 
worshippers  unless  a  victim  was  sacrificed ;  if  the  oblation 
was  purely  cereal  it  was  wholly  consumed  either  on  the 
altar  or  by  the  priests,  in  the  holy  place,  i.e.  by  the 
representatives  of  the  deity.^  In  like  manner  the  only 
Arabian  meal-offering  about  which  we  have  particulars, 
that  of  the  god  Ocaisir,^  was  laid  before  the  idol  in 
handfuls.  The  poor,  however,  were  allowed  to  partake 
of  it,  being  viewed  no  doubt  as  the  guests  of  the  deity. 
The  cereal  offering  therefore  has  strictly  the  character  of 

the  evidence  is  clear  ;  Pliny,  H.  N.  vi.  161,  "nomadas  lacte  et  ferina  carne 
uesci ; "  Agatharchides  ap.  Diod.  Sic.  iii.  44.  2 ;  Ammianus,  xiv.  4,  6, 
' '  uictas  uniuersis  caro  ferina  est  lactisque  abundans  copia  qua  sustentantur  ;  " 
Nilus,  p.  27.  By  these  express  statements  we  must  interpret  the  vaguer 
utterances  of  Diodorus  (xix.  94.  9)  and  Agatharchides  {ap.  Diod.  iii.  43.  5) 
about  the  ancient  diet  of  the  Kabatseans :  the  "nourishment  supplied  by 
their  herds  "  was  mainly  milk.  Certain  Arab  tribes,  like  the  modern  Sleyb, 
had  no  herds  and  lived  wholly  by  hunting,  and  these  perhaps  are  referred 
to  in  what  Agatharchides  says  of  the  Banizomenes,  and  in  the  Syriac  life 
of  Simeon  Stylites  (Assemani,  Mart.  ii.  345),  where  at  any  rate  beard 
(Vhaiwdtha  means  game. 

iCf.  Gen.  xxvii.  7.  *Ley.  ii.  3,  v.  11,  vi.  16  (E.V.  22). 

^Yacuts.v.;  Wellh.,  p.  58  sq. 


LECT.  VI.  FOOD    OF   THE   GODS.  207 

a  tribute  paid  by  the  worshipper  to  his  god,  as  indeed  is 
expressed  by  the  name  viinha,  whereas  when  an  animal 
is  sacrificed,  the  sacrificer  and  the  deity  feast  together,  part 
of  the  victim  going  to  each.  The  predominance  assigned  in 
ancient  ritual  to  animal  sacrifice  corresponds  to  the  predomi- 
nance of  the  type  of  sacrifice  which  is  not  a  mere  payment 
of  tribute  but  an  act  of  social  fellowship  between  the  deity 
and  his  worshippers,  and  the  point  to  be  explained  is  why 
tliis  social  meal  always  includes  the  flesh  of  a  victim. 

All  sacrifices  laid  upon  the  altar  were  taken  by  the 
ancients  as  being  literally  the  food  of  the  gods.  The 
Homeric  deities  "  feast  on  hecatombs,"  ^  nay,  particular 
Greek  gods  have  special  epithets  designating  them  as  the 
goat-eater,  the  ram-eater,  the  bull-eater,  even  "the  cannibal," 
with  allusion  to  human  sacrifices."  Among  the  Hebrews 
the  conception  tliat  Jehovah  eats  the  flesh  of  bulls  and 
drinks  the  blood  of  goats,  against  which  the  author  of 
Psalm  1.  protests  so  strongly,  was  never  eliminated  from 
the  ancient  technical  language  of  the  priestly  ritual,  in 
which  the  sacrifices  are  called  wrh^  ^rb,  "  the  food  of  the 
deity."  In  its  origin  this  phrase  must  belong  to  the  same 
circle  of  ideas  as  Jotham's  "  wine  which  cheereth  gods  and 
men."  But  in  the  higher  forms  of  heathenism  the  crass 
materialism  of  this  conception  was  modified,  in  the  case  of 
fire-offerings,  by  the  doctrine  that  man's  food  must  be 
etherealised  or  sublimated  into  fragrant  smoke  before  the 
gods  partake  of  it.  This  observation  brings  us  to  the 
second  of  the  points  which  we  have  noted  in  connection 
with  Hebrew  sacrifice,  viz.  the  distinction  between  sacrifices 
that  are  merely  set  forth  on  the  sacred  table  before  the 
deity,  and  such  as  are  consumed  by  fire  upon  the  altar. 

2.  The  table  of  shewbread  has  its  closest  parallel  in 
the  ledistcmia  of  ancient  heathenism,  when  a  table  laden 

Iliad,  IX.  531.  aiyo^ayos,  xpialfdyos,  ravfoipeiyaSf  ^ituffo;  ufitirrnt. 


208  LECTISTERNIA   AND  lect.  vi. 


with  meats  was  spread  beside  the  idol.  Such  tables  were 
set  in  the  great  temple  of  Bel  at  Babylon/  and,  if  any 
weight  is  to  be  given  to  the  apocryphal  story  of  Bel  and 
the  Dragon  in  the  Greek  Book  of  Daniel,  it  was  popularly 
believed  that  the  god  actually  consumed  the  meal  provided 
for  him,^  a  superstition  that  might  easily  hold  its  ground 
by  priestly  connivance  where  the  table  was  spread  inside 
a  temple.  A  more  primitive  form  of  the  same  kind  of 
offering  appears  in  Arabia,  where  the  meal-offering  to  Ocaisir 
is  cast  by  handfuls  at  the  foot  of  the  idol,  mingled  with 
the  hair  of  the  worshipper,^  and  milk  is  poured  over  the 
sacred  stones.  A  narrative  of  somewhat  apocryphal 
colour,  given  without  reference  to  his  authority  by  Sprenger,* 
has  it  that  in  the  worship  of  'Amm-anas  in  Southern 
Arabia  whole  hecatombs  were  slaughtered  and  left  to  be 
devoured  by  wild  beasts.  Apart  from  the  exaggeration, 
there  may  be  something  in  this  ;  for  the  idea  that  sacred 
animals  are  the  guests  or  clients  of  the  god  is  not  alien  to 
Arabian  thought,^  and  to  feed  them  is  an  act  of  religion 
in  many  heathen  systems,  especially  where,  as  in  Egypt,^ 
the  gods  themselves  are  totem-deities,  i.e.  personifications  or 

1  Herod,  i.  181,  183  ;  Diod.  Sic.  ii.  9.  7. 

^  The  story,  so  far  as  it  lias  a  basis  in  actual  superstition,  is  probably 
drawn  from  Egyptian  belief:^) ;  but  in  such  matters  Egypt  and  Babylon  were 
much  alike  ;  Herod,  i.  182. 

^  The  same  thing  probably  applies  to  other  Arabian  meal-offerings,  e.g. 
the  wheat  and  barley  offered  to  Al-Kholasa  (Azraci,  p.  78).  As  the  dove 
was  the  sacred  bird  at  Mecca,  the  epithet  Mot'im  al-talr,  "  he  who  feeds  the 
birds,"  applied  to  the  idol  that  stood  ujion  Marwa  (ibid.),  seems  to  point  to 
similar  meal-offerings  rather  than  to  animal  victims  left  lying  before  the 
god.  The  "idol"  made  of  liais,  i.e.  a  mass  of  dates  kneaded  up  with 
butter  and  sour  milk,  which  the  B.  Hanlfa  ate  up  in  time  of  famine  (see 
the  lexx.  s.v.  2.£\j..'j),  probably  belonged  to  the  widespread  class  of  cereal 
offerings  shaped  as  rude  idols  and  eaten  sacramentally  (Liebrecht,  Zur 
VolkHkandc,  p.  436,  ZDMG.  xxx.  539). 

*  Leh.  Moh.  iii.  457. 

^  See  above,  p.  134  sqq.,  and  the  god-name  Mot'im  al-tair  in  the  last 
note  but  one. 

c  Strabo,  xvii.  1.  39  sq.  (p.  812). 


LECT.  VI.  SIMILAR    OBLATIONS.  209 

individual  representations  of  the  sacred  character  and 
attributes  which,  in  the  purely  totem  stage  of  religion, 
were  ascribed  without  distinction  to  all  animals  of  the 
holy  kind.  Thus  at  Cynopolis  in  Egypt,  where  dogs  were 
lionoured  and  fed  with  sacred  food,  the  local  deity  was  tlie 
divine  dog  Anubis,  and  similarly  in  Greece,  at  the  sanctuary 
of  the  Wolf-Apollo  (Apollo  Lycius)  of  Sicyon,  an  old  tradi- 
tion preserved— though  in  a  distorted  form — the  memory  of 
a  time  when  flesh  used  to  be  set  forth  for  the  wolves.^  It 
is  by  no  means  impossible  that  something  of  the  same  sort 
took  place  at  certain  Arabian  shrines,  for  we  have  already 
learned  how  closely  the  gods  were  related  to  the  jinn  and 
the  jinn  to  wild  animals,  and  the  list  of  Arabian  deities 
includes  a  Lion-god  (Yaghuth)  and  a  Vulture-god  (Nasr),'"^ 
to  whose  worship  rites  like  those  described  by  Sprenger 
would  be  altogether  appropriate. 

But,  while  it  cannot  be  thought  impossible  that  sacri- 
ficial victims  were  presented  on  holy  ground  and  left  to  be 
devoured  by  wild  beasts  as  the  guests  or  congeners  of  the 
gods,  I  confess  that  there  seems  to  me  to  be  no  sufficient 
evidence  that  such  a  practice  had  any  considerable  place 
in  Arabian  ritual.  The  leading  idea  in  the  animal  sacrifices 
of  the  Semites,  as  we  shall  see  by  and  by,  was  not  that  of 
a  gift  made  over  to  the  god,  but  of  an  act  of  communion, 
in  which  the  god  and  his  worshippers  unite  by  partaking 
together  of  the  flesh  and  blood  of  a  sacred  victim.  It 
is  true  that  in  the  case  of  certain  very  solenm  sacrifices, 
especially  of  piacnla,  to  which  class  the  sacrifices  cited  by 
Sprenger  appear  to  belong,  the  victim  sometimes  came  to 

^  Pausanias,  ii.  9.  7.  Tlie  later  rationalism  whicli  changed  the  Wolf-goJ 
into  a  Wolf-slayer  gave  the  story  a  corresponding  twist  by  relating  that  tlio 
flesh  was  poisoned,  nnderthe  god's  directions,  with  the  leaves  of  a  tree  whoso 
trunk  was  preserved  in  the  temple,  like  the  sacred  erica  at  Byblus. 

-  See  Kimhip,  j..  192,  209  ;  Nold.ke,  ZDMO.  1886,  p.  186.  See  also  for 
the  Himyarite  Vultnrc-god,  ZJ)MG.  xxix.  600,  and  compare  the  eagle 
standard  of  ilorra,  Nabiglia,  iv.  7,  Alilw.  =xxi.  7,  Dcr. 

0 


210  THE    ARABIAN  lect.  vi. 

be  regarded  as  so  sacred  that  the  worshippers  did  not 
venture  to  eat  of  it  at  all,  but  that  the  flesh  was  burned 
or  buried  or  otherwise  disposed  of  in  a  way  that  secured  it 
from  profanation ;  and  among  the  Arabs,  who  did  not  use 
burning  except  in  the  case  of  human  sacrifices,  we  can 
quite  well  understand  that  one  way  of  disposing  of  holy 
flesh  might  be  to  leave  it  to  be  eaten  by  the  sacred 
animals  of  the  god.  On  the  whole,  however,  all  the 
well-authenticated  accounts  of  Arabian  sacrifice  seem  to 
indicate  that  the  original  principle,  that  the  worshippers 
must  actually  eat  of  the  sacred  flesh,  was  very  rigorously 
held  to.^  Wellhausen  indeed  is  disposed  to  think  that  the 
practice  of  slaughtering  animals  and  leaving  them  beside 
the  altar  to  be  devoured  by  wild  beasts  was  not  confined 
to  certain  exceptional  cults,  but  prevailed  generally  in  the 
case  of  the  widespread  class  of  sacrifices  called  'atair 
(sing,  \itwa).  According  to  Moslem  tradition  this  name 
was  mainly  applied  to  certain  annual  sacrifices  presented 
in  the  month  Eajab,  which  originally  corresponded  to  the 
Hebrew  Passover  -  month  (Abib,  Nisan).^     Here,  therefore, 

^  The  evidence  of  Nilus  is  very  important  in  this  connection  ;  for  the 
interval  between  his  time  and  that  of  the  oldest  native  traditions  is  scarcely 
sufficient  to  allow  for  the  development  of  an  extensive  system  of  sacrifice 
without  a  sacrificial  meal ;  infra,  p.  320. 

*  Cf.  Wellhausen,  p.  94  sq.  To  complete  the  parallelism  of  the  Passover 
with  the  Eajab  offerings,  "Wellhausen  desiderates  evidence  that  the  'atdir  of 
Rajab  were  firstlings.  From  the  scholia  to  Harith's  Moall.  69,  it  would 
seem  that  they  correspond  rather  to  tithes,  with  which,  and  not  with  the 
firstlings,  I  have  compared  them  in  my  Prophets,  p.  383,  following  Ewald, 
Alterth.  p.  398.  The  traditionists,  ejj.  Bokhari,  vi.  207  (at  the  close  of  the 
Kit.  al-'acica),  distinguish  between  firstlings  {fara)  and  'atira,  but  the  line 
of  distinction  is  not  sharp.  The  lexicons  apply  the  name  fara',  not  only 
to  firstlings  sacrificed  while  their  flesh  was  still  like  glue  (LisciJi,  x.  120), 
but  also  to  the  sacrifice  of  one  beast  in  a  hundred,  which  is  what  the 
scholiast  above  cited  understands  by  the  'ailra.  Conversely  the  Lisdn, 
vi.  210,  defines  the  'alira  as  a  firstling  (aicival  via  yuntaj)  which  was 
sacrificed  to  the  gods.  If  we  could  accept  this  statement  without  reserve, 
in  the  general  confusion  of  the  later  Arabs  on  the  subject,  it  would  supply 
what  Wellhausen  desiderates. 


LECT.  vr.  ATAIR.  211 

we  seem  to  have  to  do  with  a  very  ancient  sacrificial 
custom,  older  than  the  separation  of  the  Hebrews  from 
the  Arabs,  and  it  is  precisely  in  connection  with  such  very 
ancient  and  therefore  very  holy  rites  that  we  might  not 
unreasonably  expect  to  find  the  victim  invested  with  a 
sanctity  so  peculiar  that  no  part  of  its  flesh  might  be 
eaten.  But  the  positive  evidence  that  it  was  so  is  very 
meagre,  and  admits  of  a  different  explanation.  "  It  is 
remarkable,"  says  Wellhausen,  "  how  often  we  hear  of  the 
'atair  lying  around  the  altar-idol,  and  sometimes  in  poetical 
comparisons  the  slain  are  said  to  be  left  lying  on  the 
battlefield  like  'atd'ir."  -^  But  on  the  Arabian  method  of 
sacrifice  the  carcases  of  the  victims  naturally  lie  on  the 
ground,  beside  the  sacred  stone,  till  the  blood,  which  is  the 
god's  portion,  has  drained  into  the  ghabghab,  or  pit  at  its 
foot,  and  till  all  the  other  ritual  prescriptions  have  been 
fulfilled.^  Thus  at  a  great  feast  when  many  victims  were 
offered  together,  the  scene  would  resemble  a  battlefield. 
It  is  not  therefore  necessary  to  suppose  that  the  'atair 
at  Rajab  were  not  used  for  a  sacrificial  feast ;  and,  as  the 
name  'atlra  seems  to  be  also  used  in  a  more  general  sense 
of  any  victim  whose  blood  is  applied  to  the  sacred  stones 
at  the  sanctuary,  it  is  hardly  to  be  thought  that  there 
was  anything  very  exceptional  in  the  form  of  the  Eajab 
ceremony. 

It    must    be    supposed    that    when    gifts    of    food  — 
whether  animal  or  cereal  —  were   first   presented   at   the 

1  Wellh.,  p.  115 ;  cf.  the  verses  cited  ihiJ.  pp.  16,  56  ;  and,  for  the  poetical 
comparisons,  Ibn  Hisliam,  534.  4  ;  Alcama,  vi.  3  Soc. 

*  Cf.  the  verses  from  Yacut,  iv.  852,  translated  by  Wellhausen,  p.  53  sq. 
In  the  verse  about  Sowa,  ibid.  p.  16,  I  am  inclined  to  point  ttiznUu.  At 
a  feast,  when  the  sun  was  liot,  it  was  the  custom  to  shade  the  flesh  that 
it  might  not  putrefy;  see  Maidani,  i.  133  (the  first  prov.  under  t.*-  i). 
Maidani  uses  \^  II.,  but  the  parallel  passage  in  Al-Mofaddal,  p.  262 
(Constant.  A.  H.  1301),  has  also  Conj.  IV.  in  the  same  sense. 


2i2  LIBATIONS   OF  lect.  vr. 

shrines  of  the  gods,  the  belief  was  that  they  were  actually 
consumed  by  the  deity.  To  enquire  at  length  into  the 
origin  of  such  a  belief  would  carry  us  too  far  from  our 
present  subject  and  trench  on  the  question  of  the  ultimate 
nature  and  origin  of  the  gods  of  heathenism.  I  will  only 
remark  that  when  we  find  early  races  all  over  the  world 
possessed  with  the  idea  that  their  oblations  serve  as  food 
for  the  gods,  we  must  not  try  to  explain  this  away  by 
allegorical  theories,  but  must  look  for  facts  that  will 
account  for  the  ritual  in  a  plain  straightforward  way. 
So  far  as  I  know  such  facts  are  found  only  in  connection 
with  the  totem  system  of  belief,  for  in  totemism  the  gifts 
laid  before  the  sacred  animals  are  actually  eaten.  Thus 
in  all  religions  in  which  the  gods  have  been  developed 
out  of  totems,  the  ritual  act  of  laying  food  before  the 
deity  is  perfectly  intelligible.  Whether  we  are  entitled 
to  invert  the  argument,  and  conclude  that  the  universal 
practice  of  offering  oblations  of  food  to  the  gods  indi- 
cates that  all  heathen  religions  are  based  on  totemism, 
is  another  question,  into  which  I  cannot  enter  now. 

But  however  this  may  be,  the  idea  that  the  gods  actually 
consume  the  solid  food  that  is  deposited  at  their  shrines  is 
too  crude  to  subsist  without  modification  beyond  the  savage 
state  of  society  ;  the  ritual  may  survive,  but  the  sacrificial 
gifts,  which  the  god  is  evidently  unable  to  dispose  of  him- 
self, will  come  to  be  the  perquisite  of  the  priests,  as  in 
the  case  of  the  shewbread,  or  of  the  poor,  as  in  the  meal 
sacrifice  to  Ocaisir.  In  such  cases  the  actual  eating  is 
done  by  the  guests  of  the  deity,  but  the  god  himself  may 
still  be  supposed  to  partake  of  the  meal  in  a  subtle  and 
supersensuous  way.  It  is  interesting  to  note  the  gradations 
of  ritual  that  correspond  to  this  modification  of  the  original 
idea. 

In    the    more   primitive   forms   of   Semitic  religion   the 


LKCT.  VI.  BLOOD    AND    WINE.  213 

difficulty  of  conceiving  that  the  gods  actually  partake  of 
food  is  partly  got  over  by  a  predominant  use  of  liquid 
oblations  ;  for  fluid  substances,  which  sink  in  and  disappear, 
are  more  easily  believed  to  be  consumed  by  the  deity  than 
obstinate  masses  of  solid  matter. 

The  libation,  which  holds  quite  a  secondary  place  in  the 
more  advanced  Semitic  rituals,  and  is  generally  a  mere 
accessory  to  a  fire-offering,  has  great  prominence  among  the 
Arabs,  to  whom  sacrifices  by  fire  were  practically  unknown 
except,  as  we  shall  see  by  and  by,  in  the  case  of  human 
sacrifice.  Its  typical  form  is  the  libation  of  blood,  the 
subtle  vehicle  of  the  life  of  the  sacrifice ;  but  milk,  which 
was  used  in  ritual  both  by  the  Arabs  and  by  the  Phoeni- 
cians, is  also  no  doubt  a  very  ancient  Semitic  libation.  In 
ordinary  Arabian  sacrifices  the  blood  which  was  poured 
over  the  sacred  stone  was  all  that  fell  to  the  god's  part,  the 
whole  flesh  being  consumed  by  the  worshippers  and  their 
guests ;  and  the  early  prevalence  of  this  kind  of  oblation 
appears  from  the  fact  that  the  word  -[dj,  "  to  pour,"  which  in 
Hebrew  means  to  pour  out  a  drhik-offering,  is  in  Arabic  the 
general  term  for  an  act  of  worship. 

In  the  north  Semitic  ritual  the  most  notable  feature  in 
the  libation,  which  ordinarily  consisted  of  wine,  but  some- 
times of  water  (1  Sam.  vii.  6),  is  that  it  was  not  consumed 
by  fire,  eyen  when  it  went  with  a  fire-offering.  The  Greeks 
and  liomans  poured  the  sacrificial  wine  over  the  flesh,  but 
the  Hebrews  treated  it  like  the  blood,  pouring  it  out  at  the 
base  of  the  altar.^  In  Ecclesiasticus  the  wine  so  treated  is 
even  called  "  the  blood  of  the  grape,"  from  which  one  is 
tempted  to  conclude  that  here  also  blood  is  the  typical 
form  of  libation,  and  that  wine  is  a  surrogate  for  it,  as 

^  Ecclus.  1.  15  ;  Jos.,  Anil.  iii.  9.  4.  Numb.  xv.  7  is  sometimes  cited  as 
proving  that  in  oMcr  times  the  wine  was  poured  over  the  sacrificial  flesh, 
but  see  against  this  interpretation  Numb,  xxviii.  7. 


214  LIBATIONS. 


LECT.   VI. 


fruit-juice  seems  to  have  been  in  certain  Arabian  rites.^ 
It  is  true  that  the  blood  of  the  sacrifice  is  not  called  a 
libation  in  Hebrew  ritual,  and  in  Psalm  xvi.  4  "  drink- 
offerings  of  blood  "  are  spoken  of  as^  something  heathenish. 
But  this  proves  that  •such  libations  were  known:  and  that 
the  Hebrew  Mtar  ritual  of  the  blood  is  essentially  a  drink- 
offering  appears  from  'Psalm  1.  13,  where  Jehovah  asks, 
"  Will  I  eat  the  flesh  of  biills  or  drink  the  blood  of  goats  ?  " 
and  also  from  2  Sam  xxiii.  17,  where  David  pours  out  as 
a  drink-offering  the  water  from  the  well  of  Bethlehem, 
refusing  to  drink  "  the  blood  of  the  men  that  fetched  it  in 
jeopardy  of  their  lives."  Putting  all  this  together,  and 
noting  also  that  libations  were  retained  as  a  chief  part  of 
ritual  in  the  domestic  heathenism  of  the  Hebrew  women 
in  the  time  of  Jeremiah,^  and  that  private  service  is  often 
more  conservative  than  public  worship,  we  are  led  to  con- 
clude (1)  That  the  libation  of  blood  is  a  common  Semitic 
practice,  older  than  fire-sacrifices,  and  (2)  That  the  libation 
of  wine  is  in  some  sense  an  imitation  of,  and  a  surrogate 
for,  the  primitive  blood-offering. 

In  Hebrew  ritual  oil  is  not  a  libation,  but  when  used  in 
sacrifice  serves  to  moisten  and  enrich  a  cereal  offerincf.  The 
ancient  custom  of  pouring  oil  on  sacred  stones  ^  was  presum- 
ably maintained  at  Bethel  according  to  the  precedent  set 
by  Jacob ;  and  even  in  the  fourth  Christian  century  the 
Bordeaux  pilgrim  speaks  of  the  "  lapis  pertusus  "  at  Jerusa- 
lem "  ad  quern  ueniunt  ludjiei  singulis  annis  et  ungunt 
eum ; "  but,  as  oil  by  itself  was  not  an  article  of  food,  the 

1  KinsJdp,  p.  261  sq.  ;  Wellh.,  p.  121. 

2  Jer.  xix.  13,  xxxii.  29,  xliv.  17,  18.  With  this  -worship  on  the  house- 
tops, cf.  what  Straho,  xvi.  4.  26,  tells  of  the  daily  offerings  of  libations  and 
incense  presented  to  the  sun  hy  the  Nabatreans  at  an  altar  erected  on  the 
house-tops.  The  sacrificial  act  must  be  done  in  the  presence  of  the  deity  (cf. 
Nilus,  pp.  30,  117),  and  if  the  sun  or  the  queen  of  heaven  is  worshipped,  a 
place  open  to  the  sky  must  be  chosen. 

*  Gen.  xxviii.  18  ;  xxxv.  14. 


LECT.  VI.  OIL    OFFERINGS.  215 

natural  analogy  to  this  act  of  ritual  is  to  be  sought  in  the 
application  of  unguents  to  the  hair  and  skin.  The  use  of 
unguents  was  a  luxury  proper  to  feasts  and  gala  days,  when 
men  wore  their  best  clothes  and  made  merry ;  and  from 
Ps.  xlv.  8  (E.V.  7)  compared  with  Isa.  Ixi.  3,  we  may  con- 
clude that  the  anointing  of  kings  at  their  coronation  is  part 
of  the  ceremony  of  investing  them  in  the  festal  dress  ami 
ornaments  appropriate  to  their  dignity  on  that  joyous  day 
(cf.  Cant.  iii.  11).  To  anoint  the  head  of  a  guest  was  a 
hospitable  act  and  a  sign  of  lionour ;  it  was  the  completion 
of  the  toilet  appropriate  to  a  feast.  Thus  the  sacred  stone 
or  rude  idol  described  by  Pausanias  (x.  24.  6)  had  oil  poured 
on  it  daily,  and  was  crowned  with  wool  at  every  feast. 
We  have  seen  that  the  Semites  on  festal  occasions  dressed 
up  their  sacred  poles,  and  they  did  the  same  with  their 
idols.^  With  all  this  the  ritual  of  anointing  goes  quite 
naturally.  But  apart  from  this,  the  very  act  of  applying 
ointment  to  the  sacred  symbol  had  a  religious  significance. 
The  Hebrew  word  meaning  to  anoint  (mashah)  means 
properly  to  wipe  or  stroke  with  the  hand,  which  was  used 
to  spread  the  unguent  over  the  skin.  Thus  the  anointing 
of  the  sacred  symbol  is  associated  with  the  simpler  form  of 
homage  common  in  Arabia,  in  which  the  hand  was  passed 
over  the  idol  {tamassoh).  In  the  oath  described  by  Ibn 
Hisham,  p.  85,  the  parties  dip  their  hands  in  unguent  and 
then  wipe  them  on  the  Caaba.  The  ultimate  source  of  the 
use  of  unguents  in  religion  will  be  discussed  by  and  by  in 
connection  with  animal  sacrifice. 

The  sacrificial  use  of  blood,  as  we  shall  see  hereafter, 
is  connected  with  a  series  of  very  important  ritual  ideas, 
turning  on  the  conception  that  the  blood  is  a  special  seat  of 
the  life.  But  primarily,  when  the  blood  is  offered  at  the 
altar,  it  is  conceived  to  be  drunk  by  the  deity.     Apart  from 

1  Ezek.  xvi.  18. 


216  OFFERINGS 


LECT.  VI. 


Psalm  1.  1 3  the  direct  evidence  for  this  is  somewhat  scanty, 
so  far  as  the  Semites  are  concerned ;  the  authority  usually 
appealed  to  is  Maimonides,  who  states  that  the  Sabians 
looked  on  blood  as  the  nourishment  of  the  gods.  So  late 
a  witness  would  have  little  value  if  he  stood  alone,  but 
the  expression  in  the  Psalm  cannot  be  mere  rhetoric,  and 
the  same  belief  appears  among  early  nations  in  all  parts 
of  the  globe.^  Nor  does  this  oblation  form  an  exception 
to  the  rule  that  the  offerings  of  the  crods  consist  of  human 
food,  for  many  savages  drink  fresh  blood  by  way  of 
nourishment,  and  esteem  it  a  special  delicacy.^ 

Among  the  Arabs,  down  to  the  age  of  ]\Iohammed,  blood 
drawn  from  the  veins  of  a  livinc;  camel  was  eaten  —  in 
a  kind  of  blood  pudding  —  in  seasons  of  hunger,  and 
perhaps  also  at  other  times.^  We  shall  find  however,  as 
we  proceed,  that  sacrificial  blood,  which  contained  the  life, 
gradually  came  to  be  considered  as  something  too  sacred 
to  be  eaten,  and  that  in  most  sacrifices  it  was  entirely 
made  over  to  the  god  at  the  altar.  As  all  slaughter  of 
domestic  animals  for  food  was  originally  sacrificial  among 
the  Arabs  as  well  as  among  the  Hebrews,  this  carried  with 
it  the  disuse  of  blood  as  an  article  of  ordinary  food ;  and 

'  ^  See  Tylor,  Primitive  Culture,  ii.  346.  The  testimony  of  Maimonides 
will  come  before  us  again. 

-  See,  for  America,  Bancroft,  Native  Baces,  i.  .'iS,  492,  ii.  344.  In  Africa 
fresh  blood  is  held  as  a  dainty  by  all  the  negroes  of  the  White  Nile  (Marno, 
Jieise,  p.  79) ;  it  is  largely  drunk  Ijy  Masai  warriors  (Thomson,  p.  430)  ;  and 
also  by  the  Gallas,  as  various  travellers  attest.  Among  the  Hottentots  the 
pure  blood  of  beasts  is  forbidden  to  women  but  not  to  men  ;  Kolben,  State 
of  the  Cape,  i.  205,  cf.  203.  In  the  last  case  we  see  that  the  blood  is  sacred 
food.  For  blood-drinking  among  the  Tartars,  see  Yule's  Marco  Polo,  i.  254, 
and  the  editor's  note.  Where  mineral  salt  is  not  used  for  food,  tlie  drinking  of 
blood  supplies,  as  Thomson  remarks,  an  important  constituent  to  the  system. 

^  Maidani,  ii.  119;  IJamana,  p.  645,  last  verse.  Yrova.  Agli.  xvi.  107.  20, 
one  is  led  to  doubt  whetlier  the  practice  was  confined  to  seasons  of  famine, 
or  whether  this  kind  of  food  was  used  more  regularly,  as  was  done,  on  the 
other  side  of  the  Red  Sea,  by  the  Troglodytes  (Agatharchides  in  Fr.  Geog. 
Gr.  i.  153).     See  further  the  Lexx.,  s.vv.  famda,  'ilhiz,  bajja,  musawwad. 


LECT.   VI. 


OF    BLOOD.  217 


even  when  slaughter  ceased  to  involve  a  formal  sacrifice,  it 
was  still  thought  necessary  to  slay  the  victim  in  the  name 
of  a  god  and  pour  the  blood  on  the  ground.^  Among  the 
Hebrews  this  practice  soon  gave  rise  to  an  absolute  pro- 
hibition of  blood-eating ;  among  the  Arabs  the  rule  was 
made  absolute  only  by  Mohammed's  legislation." 

The  idea  that  the  gods  partake  only  of  the  liquid  parts 
of  the  sacrifice  appears,  as  has  been  already  said,  to  indicate 
a  modification  of  tlie  most  crassly  materialistic  conception 
of  the  divine  nature.  The  direction  which  this  modifica- 
tion took  may,  I  think,  be  judged  of  by  comparing  the 
sacrifices  of  tlie  gods  with  tlie  oblations  offered  to  the 
dead.  In  the  famous  veKvta  of  the  Odyssey  ^  the  ghosts 
drink  greedily  of  the  sacrificial  blood,  and  libations  of 
gore  form  a  special  feature  in  Greek  offerings  to  heroes. 
Among  the  Arabs,  too,  the  dead  are  thirsty  rather  than 
hungry,  water  and  wine  are  poured  upon  their  graves.'* 
Thirst  is  a  subtler  appetite  than  hunger,  and  therefore 
more  appropriate  to  the  disembodied  shades,  just  as  it  is 
from  thirst  rather  than  from  hunger  that  the  Hebrews 
and  many  other  nations  borrow  metaphors  for  spiritual 
longings  and  intellectual  desires.  Thus  the  idea  that  the 
gods  drink,  but  do  not  eat,  seems  to  mark  the  feeling  that 
they  must  be  thought  of  as  having  a  less  solid  material 
nature  than  men. 

A  farther  step  in  the  same  direction  is  associated  with 
the  introduction  of  fire  sacrifices ;  for,  though  there  are 
valid   reasons  for   thinking   that  the    practice  of   burning 

^  Wellh.,  p.  114.  In  an  Arab  encampment  slaves  sleep  beside  "the  blood 
and  the  dung"  {A<jh.  viii.  74.  29)  ;  of.  1  Sam.  ii.  8. 

-  Whether  the  blood  of  game  was  prohibited  to  the  Hebrews  before  the 
law  of  Lev.  xvii.  13  is  not  quite  clear  ;  Deut.  xii.  16  is  ambiguous. 

'Bit.  xi. ;  of.  Pindar,  01.  i.  90,  where  the  word  a'l/iaKavpixi  is  explained 
by  Hesj'chius  as  to.  Uaylf/nara.  rut  xxriix(>fii>i>>* ',  Pausan.,  V.  13,  §  2  ;  Plut., 
AristideH,  21. 

«  Wellhausen,  p.  161. 


218  SACRIFICES 


LECT.   VI. 


the  flesh  or  fat  of  victims  originated  in  a  different  line 
of  thought  (as  we  shall  by  and  by  see),  the  fire  ritual 
readily  lent  itself  to  the  idea  that  the  burnt  flesh  is  simply 
a  food-offering  etherealised  into  fragrant  smoke,  and  that 
the  gods  regale  themselves  on  the  odour  instead  of  the 
substance  of  the  sacrifice.  Here  again  the  analogy  of  gifts 
to  the  dead  helps  us  to  comprehend  the  point  of  view ; 
among  the  Greeks  of  the  seventh  century  B.C.  it  was,  as 
we  learn  from  the  story  of  Periander  and  Melissa,  a  new 
idea  that  the  dead  could  make  no  use  of  the  gifts  buried 
with  them  unless  they  were  etherealised  by  fire.^  A 
similar  notion  seems  to  have  attached  itself  to  the  custom 
of  sacrifice  by  fire,  combined  probably  at  an  early  date 
with  the  idea  that  the  gods,  as  ethereal  beings,  lived  in  the 
upper  air,  towards  which  the  sacrificial  smoke  ascended  in 
savoury  clouds.  Thus  the  prevalence  among  the  settled 
Semites  of  fire  sacrifices,  which  were  interpreted  as  offer- 
ings of  fragrant  smoke,  marks  the  firm  establishment  of  a 
conception  of  the  divine  nature  which,  though  not  purely 
spiritual,  is  at  least  stripped  of  the  crassest  aspects  of 
materialism. 

3.  The  distinction  between  sacrifices  which  are  wholly 
made  over  to  the  god  and  sacrifices  of  which  the  god  and 
tlie  worshipper  partake  together  requires  careful  handling. 
In  the  later  form  of  Hebrew  ritual  laid  down  in  the 
Levitical  law,  the  distinction  is  clearly  marked.  To  the 
former  class  belong  all  cereal  oblations  (Heb.  minha ;  A.V. 
"  offering  "  or  "  meat-offering  "),  which  so  far  as  they  are  not 
burned  on  the  altar  are  assigned  to  the  priests,  and  among 
animal  sacrifices  the  sin-offering  and  the  burnt-offering  or 
holocaust.  Most  sin-offerings  were  not  holocausts,  but  the 
part  of  the  flesh  that  was  not  burned  fell  to  the  priests. 

^  Herodotus,  v.  92  ;  cf.  Joannes  Lydus,  Mens.  iii.  27,  where  the  object  of 
burning  the  dead  is  said  to  be  to  etherealise  the  body  along  with  the  soul. 


LECT.  VI.  BY    FIRE.  219 

To  the  latter  class,  again,  belong  the  zcbalilin  or  shclamlvi 
(sing,  z^hah,  shdlem,  Amos  v.  22),  that  is,  all  the  ordinary- 
festal  sacrifices,  vows  and  freewill  ofierings,  of  which  the 
share  of  the  deity  was  the  blood  and  the  fat  of  the 
intestines,  the  rest  of  the  carcase  (subject  to  the  payment 
of  certain  dues  to  the  officiating  priest)  being  left  to  tlie 
worshipper  to  form  a  social  feast.^  In  judging  of  the 
original  scope  and  meaning  of  these  two  classes  of  sacrifice 
it  will  be  convenient,  in  the  first  instance,  to  confine  our 
attention  to  the  simplest  and  most  common  forms  of 
offering.  In  the  last  days  of  the  kingdom  of  Judah,  and 
still  more  after  the  exile,  piacular  sacrifices  and  holocausts 
acquired  a  prominence  which  they  did  not  possess  in 
ancient  times.  The  old  history  knows  nothing  of  the 
Levitical  sin-offering ;  the  atoning  function  of  sacrifice  is 
not  confined  to  a  particular  class  of  oblation,  but  belongs  to 
all  sacrifices.^     The   holocaust,  again,  although  ancient,  is 

'  In  the  English  Bible  zehahlm  are  rendered  "  sacrifices,"  and  sAe?a??if7?i 
"  peace-oflerings."  The  latter  rendering  is  not  plausible,  and  the  term 
shelamhn  can  liardly  be  separated  from  the  verb  nhiUenr,  to  pay  or  discharge, 
f.g.  a  vow.  Zehah  is  the  more  general  word,  including  (like  the  Arabii: 
dhlhh)  all  animals  slain  for  food,  agreeably  with  the  fact  that  in  old  times  all 
slaughter  was  sacrificial.  In  later  times,  when  slaughter  and  sacrifice  were 
no  longer  identical,  zehah  was  not  precise  enough  to  be  \ised  as  a  technical 
term  of  ritual,  and  so  the  term  shelamim  came  to  be  more  largely  used  than 
in  the  earlier  literature. 

On  the  sacrificial  lists  of  the  Carthaginians  the  terras  corresponding  to 
r6]}  and  nnr  seem  to  be  ^i?D  and  n^lV.  The  former  is  the  old  Hebrew  ^^^3 
(Deut.  xxxiii.  10  ;  1  Sam.  vii.  9),  the  latter  is  etymologically  quite  obscure. 
In  the  Cartliaginian  burnt-sacrifice  a  certain  weight  of  the  flesh  was 
apparently  not  consumed  on  the  altar,  but  given  to  the  priests  (C.  I.  S.  165), 
as  in  the  case  of  the  Hebrew  sin-offering,  which  was  probably  a  modification 
of  the  lioloeaust.  The  pp3  D7t^^  which  appears  along  witii  77D  and  JiyiV 
in  C.  I.  S.  165  (but  not  in  C.  /.  S.  167),  is  hardly  a  third  co-ordinate  species  of 
sacrifice.  The  editors  of  the  Corpus  regard  it  as  a  variety  of  the  holocaust 
{hoi.  encharittlicnm),  which  is  not  easily  reconciled  with  their  own  restitution 
of  1.  11  or  with  the  Hebrew  sense  of  D^t^^  Perhaps  it  is  an  ordinary  sacrifice 
accompanying  a  holocaust. 

*  To  zebah  and  minha,  1  Sam.  iii.  14,  xxvi.  19,  and  still  more  to  the 
holocaust,  Micah  vi.  6,  7. 


220  SACRIFICIAL    MEALS  lect.  vi. 

not  in  ancient  times  a  common  form  of  sacrifice,  and  unless 
on  very  exceptional  occasions  occurs  only  in  great  public 
feasts  and  in  association  with  zehahim.  The  distressful 
times  that  preceded  the  end  of  Hebrew  independence  drove 
men  to  seek  exceptional  religious  means  to  conciliate  the 
favour  of  a  deity  who  seemed  to  have  turned  his  back  on 
his  people.  Piacular  rites  and  costly  holocausts  became, 
therefore,  more  usual,  and  after  the  abolition  of  the  local 
high  places  this  new  importance  was  still  further  accentu- 
ated by  contrast  with  the  decline  of  the  more  common 
forms  of  sacrifice.  When  each  local  community  had  its 
own  high  place,  it  was  the  rule  that  every  animal  slain  for 
food  should  be  presented  at  the  altar,  and  every  meal  at 
which  flesh  was  served  had  the  character  of  a  sacrificial 
feast.^  As  men  ordinarily  lived  on  bread*)  fruit  and  milk, 
and  ate  flesh  only  on  feast  days  and  holidays,  this  rule  was 
easily  observed  as  long  as  the  local  sanctuaries  stood. 
But  when  there  was  no  altar  left  except  at  Jerusalem,  the 
identity  of  slaughter  and  sacrifice  could  no  longer  be  main- 
tained, and  accordingly  the  law  of  Deuteronomy  allows 
men  to  slay  and  eat  domestic  animals  everywhere,  provided 
only  that  the  blood — the  ancient  share  of  the  god — is 
poured  out  upon  the  ground.'^  When  this  new  rule  came 
into  force  men  ceased  to  feel  that  the  eatino;  of  flesh  was 
essentially  a  sacred  act,  and  though  strictly  religious  meals 
were  still  maintained  at  Jerusalem  on  the  great  feast  days, 
the  sacrificial  meal  necessarily  lost  much  of  its  old  signifi- 
cance, and  the  holocaust  seemed  to  have  a  more  purely 
sacred  character  than  the  zihah,  in  which  men  ate  and 
drank  just  as  they  might  do  at  home. 

^  Hosea  ix.  4. 

-  Deut.  xii.  15,  16  ;  cf.  Lev.  xvii.  10  sq.  The  fat  of  the  intestines  was  also 
from  ancient  times  reserved  for  the  deity  (1  Sam.  ii.  16),  and  therefore  it  also 
was  forbidden  food  (Lev.  iii.  17).  The  prohibition  did  not  extend  to  the  fat 
distributed  through  other  parts  of  the  body. 


LECT.  VI.  AND    HOLOCAUSTS.  221 

But  in  ancient  times  tlie  preponderance  was  all  the 
otlier  way,  and  the  zdhah  was  not  only  much  more  frequent 
tlian  the  holocaust  but  much  more  intimately  bound  up 
with  the  prevailing  religious  ideas  and  feelings  of  the 
Hebrews.  On  this  point  the  evidence  of  the  older  litera- 
ture is  decisive ;  z^hah  and  minha,  sacrifices  slain  to  provide 
a  religious  feast,  and  vegetable  oblations  presented  at  the 
altar,  make  up  the  sum  of  the  ordinary  religious  practices 
of  the  older  Hebrews,  and  we  must  try  to  understand  these 
ordinary  rites  before  we  attack  the  harder  problem  of 
exceptional  forms  of  sacrifice. 

Now,  if  we  put  aside  the  piacida  and  whole  burnt- 
offerings,  it  appears  that,  according  to  the  Levitical  ritual, 
the  distinction  between  oblations  in  which  the  worshipper 
shared,  and  oblations  which  were  wholly  given  over  to  the 
deity  to  be  consumed  on  the  altar  or  by  the  priests,  corre- 
sponds to  the  distinction  between  animal  and  vegetable 
offerings.  The  animal  victim  was  presented  at  the  altar 
and  devoted  by  the  imposition  of  hands,  but  the  greater 
part  of  the  flesh  was  returned  to  the  worshipper,  to  be 
eaten  by  him  under  special  rules.  It  could  be  eaten  only 
by  persons  ceremonially  clean,  i.e.  fit  to  approach  the 
deity  ;  and  if  the  food  was  not  consumed  on  the  same  day, 
or  in  certain  cases  within  two  days,  the  remainder  had  to 
be  burned.^  The  plain  meaning  of  these  rules  is  that  the 
flesh  is  not  common  but  holy,"  and  that  the  act  of  eating 
it  is  a  part  of  the  service,  which  is  to  be  completed  before 
men  break  up  from  the  sanctuary.^     The  z^lah,  therefore,  is 

1  Lev.  vii.  15  sqq.,  xix.  6,  xxii.  30.  -  Hag.  ii.  12  ;  uf.  Jer.  xi.  lo,  LXX. 

*  The  old  sacrificial  feasts  occupy  but  a  single  day  (1  Sam.  ix.),  or  at  mo.st 
two  days  (1  Shiii.  xx.  27).  When  saciiticial  occasions  follow  each  other  aa 
closely  as  possible,  they  come  eitlier  daily  or  every  three  days,  i.e.  according 
to  our  way  of  counting,  every  second  day  (Amos  iv.  4,  R.  V.),  Cf.  'Amir  b. 
al-Tofail,  quoted  by  the  scholiast  to  the  Nacd'id,  ilS.  Oxon.  f.  2116  (a  refer- 
ence I  owe  to  the  late  Prof.  Wright) :  Aid  yd  laita  akliwdll  ijhnniyaii, 
lahumfl  kulli  tlidlilhatm  Uuudriui,  where  daud}-  is  cxjilained  as  "feast." 


222  CEREAL  LECT.  vr. 

not  a  mere  attenuated  offering,  in  which  man  grudges  to 
give  up  the  whole  victim  to  his  God.  On  the  contrary,  the 
central  significance  of  the  rite  lies  in  the  act  of  communion 
between  God  and  man,  when  the  worshipper  is  admitted  to 
eat  of  the  same  holy  flesh  of  which  a  part  is  laid  upon  the 
altar  as  "  the  food  of  the  deity."  But  with  the  minim 
nothing  of  this  kind  occurs ;  the  whole  consecrated  offering 
is  retained  by  the  deity,  and  the  worshipper's  part  in  the 
service  is  completed  as  soon  as  he  has  made  over  his  gift. 
In  short,  while  the  z6hah  turns  on  an  act  of  communion 
between  the  deity  and  his  worshippers,  the  minha  (as  its 
name  denotes)  is  simply  a  tribute. 

I  will  not  undertake  to  say  that  the  distinction  so 
clearly  laid  down  in  the  Levitical  law  was  observed  before 
the  exile  in  all  cases  of  cereal  sacrifices.  Probably  it  was 
not,  for  in  most  ancient  religions  we  find  that  cereal 
offerings  come  to  be  accepted  in  certain  cases  as  sub- 
stitutes for  animal  sacrifices,  and  that  in  this  way  the 
difference  between  the  two  kinds  of  offering  gradually  gets 
to  be  obliterated.^  But  in  such  matters  great  weight  is  to 
be  attached  to  priestly  tradition,  such  as  underlies  the 
Levitical  ritual.  The  priests  were  not  likely  to  invent  a 
distinction  of  the  kind  which  has  been  described,  and  in 
point  of  fact  there  is  good  evidence  that  they  did  not 
invent  it.  For  there  is  no  doubt  that  in  ancient  times 
the  ordinary  source  of  the  minha  was  the  offering  of  first- 
fruits — that  is,  of  a  small  but  choice  portion  of  the  annual 
produce  of  the  ground,  which  in  fact  is  the  only  cereal 
oblation  prescribed  in  the  oldest  laws.^  So  far  as  can  be 
seen  the   first-fruits  were   always  a  tribute  wholly  made 

1  So  at  Rome  models  in  wax  or  dougli  often  took  the  place  of  animals. 
The  same  thing  took  place  at  Athens  :  Hesychius,  s.vv.  [iov;  and  'ijl'hof/.os 
fiov; ;  cf.  Thucyd.,  i.  126  and  schol.  At  Carthage  we  have  found  the  name 
zehah  applied  to  vegetable  offerings. 

^  Exod.  xxii.  29,  xxiii.  19,  xxxiv.  26. 


LECT.  VI.  OFFERINGS.  223 


over  to  the  deity  at  the  sanctuary.  They  were  brought  by 
the  peasant  in  a  basket  and  deposited  at  the  altar/  and  so 
far  as  they  were  not  actually  burned  on  the  altar,  they 
were  assigned  to  the  priests " — not  to  the  ministrant  as  a 
reward  for  his  service,  but  to  the  priests  as  a  body,  as  the 
.household  of  the  sanctuary.^ 

Among  the  Hebrews,  as  among  many  other  agricultural 
peoples,  the  offering  of  first-fruits  was  connected  with  the 
idea  that  it  is  not  lawful  or  safe  to  eat  of  the  new  fruit 
until  the  god  has  received  his  due.^  The  offering  makes 
the  whole  crop  lawful  food,  but  it  does  not  make  it  holy 
food ;  nothing  is  consecrated  except  the  small  portion 
offered  at  the  altar,  and  of  the  remaining:  store  clean 
persons  and  unclean  eat  alike  throughout  the  year.  This, 
therefore,  is  quite  a  different  thing  from  the  consecration 
of  animal  sacrifices,  for  in  the  latter  case  the  whole  flesh 
is  holy,  and  only  those  who  are  clean  can  eat  of  it.^ 

In  old  Israel  all  slaughter  was  sacrifice,  and  a  man 
could  never  eat  beef  or  mutton  except  as  a  religious  act, 
but  cereal  food  had  no  such  sacred  associations ;  as  soon 
as  God  had  received  His  due  of  first-fruits,  the  whole 
domestic  store  was  common.  Tlie  difference  between 
cereal  and  animal  food  was  therefore  deeply  marked,  and 
though  bread  was  of  course  brought  to  the  sanctuary  to  be 

^  Deut.  xxvi.  1  sqq. 

-  Lev.  xxiii.  17  ;  Deut.  xviii.  A.  For  the  purpose  of  this  argument  it  is 
not  necessary  to  advert  to  tlie  distiuction  recognised  by  post-ljihlical 
tradition  between  reshith  and  hikkurim,  on  whicli  see  Wellh.,  Prole<jomena, 
3rd  ed.  p.  161  .sy. 

3  Tliis  follows  from  2  Kings  xxiii.  9.  The  tribute  was  sometimes  paid  to 
a  man  of  God  (2  King.s  iv.  42),  which  is  another  way  of  making  it  over  to 
the  deity.  In  the  Levitical  law  also  the  minha  belongs  to  tlie  priests  as  a 
whole  (Lev.  vii.  10).  This  is  an  important  point.  ^Vhat  the  ministrant 
receives  as  a  fee  comes  from  the  worshipper,  what  the  priests  as  a  whole 
receive  is  given  them  by  the  deity. 

*  Lev.  xxiii.  14  ;  cf.  Pliny,  //.  N.  xviii.  8. 

*  Hosea  ix.  4  refers  only  to  animal  food. 


224  SACRIFICIAL  LECT.  VI. 

eaten  with  the  zchahlm,  it  had  not  and  could  not  have  the 
same  religious  meaning  as  the  holy  flesh.  It  appears  from 
Amos  iv.  4  that  it  was  the  custom  in  northern  Israel  to 
lay  a  portion  of  the  worshipper's  provision  of  ordinary 
leavened  bread  on  the  altar  with  the  sacrificial  flesh,  and 
this  custom  was  natural  enough  ;  for  why  should  not  the 
deity's  share  of  the  sacrificial  meal  have  the  same  cereal 
accompaniments  as  man's  share  ?  But  there  is  no  indica- 
tion that  this  oblation  consecrated  the  part  of  the  bread 
retained  by  the  worshipper  and  made  it  holy  bread.  The 
only  holy  bread  of  which  we  read  is  such  as  belonged  to 
the  priests,  not  to  the  offerer.^  In  Lev.  vii.  14,  Numb.  vi. 
15,  the  cake  of  common  bread  is  given  to  the  priest 
instead  of  being  laid  on  the  altar,  but  it  is  carefully 
distinguished  from  the  minha.  In  old  times  the  priests 
had  no  altar  dues  of  this  kind.  They  had  only  the  first- 
fruits  and  a  claim  to  a  piece  of  the  sacrificial  flesh,^  from 
which  it  may  be  presumed  that  the  custom  of  offering 
bread  with  the  zebah  was  not  primitive.  Indeed  Amos 
seems  to  mention  it  with  some  surprise  as  a  thing  not 
familiar  to  Judtean  practice.  At  all  events  no  sacrificial 
meal  could  consist  of  bread  alone.  All  through  the  old 
history  it  is  taken  for  granted  that  a  religious  feast 
necessarily  implies  a  victim  slain.^ 

1  1  Sam.  xxi.  4.  ^  Detit.  xviii.  3,  4  ;  1  Sam.  ii.  13  sqq. 

3  What  lias  been  said  above  of  the  contrast  between  cereal  sacrificial  gifts 
and  the  sacriticial  feast  seems  to  me  to  hold  good  also  for  Greece  and  Rome, 
with  some  modification  in  the  case  of  domestic  meals,  which  among  the 
Semites  had  no  religious  character,  but  at  Rome  were  consecrated  by  a 
portion  being  offered  to  the  household  gods.  This,  however,  has  nothing  to  do 
with  public  religion,  in  which  the  law  holds  good  that  there  is  no  sacred  feast 
without  a  victim,  and  that  consecrated  aparchce  are  wholly  given  over  to 
the  sanctuary.  The  same  thing  holds  good  for  many  other  peoples,  and 
seems,  so  far  as  my  reading  goes,  to  be  the  general  rule.  But  there  are 
exceptions.  My  friend  Mr.  J.  G.  Frazer,  to  whose  wide  reading  I  never 
appeal  without  profit,  refers  me  to  Wilken's  Alfoeren  van  het  eiland  Beroe, 
p.  26,  where  a  true  sacrificial  feast  is  made  of  the  first-fruits  of  rice.     Tliis 


LECT.  VI.  FEAST.  225 

The  distinction  which  we  are  thus  led  to  draw  between 
the  cereal  oblation,  in  whicli  the  dominant  idea  is  that  of 
a  tribute  paid  to  the  god,  and  animal  sacrifices,  whicli  are 
essentially  acts  of  communion  between  tlie  god  and  his 
worshippers,  deserves  to  be  followed  out  in  more  detail. 
But  this  task  must  be  reserved  for  another  lecture. 

is  called  "  eating  the  soul  of  the  rice,"  so  that  the  rice  is  viewed  as  a  livinf^ 
creature.  In  such  a  case  it  is  not  unreasonable  to  say  that  the  rice  may 
be  regarded  as  really  an  animate  victim.  Agricultural  religions  seem  often 
to  have  borrowed  ideas  from  the  older  cults  of  pastoral  times. 


LECTUEE  VII. 

FIRST-FRUITS,    TITHES,    AND    SACRIFICIAL    MEALS. 

It  became  apparent  to  us  towards  the  close  of  the  last 
lecture  that  the  Levitical  distinction  between  iimiha  and 
z4bah,  or  cereal  oblation  and  animal  sacrifice,  rests  upon 
an  ancient  principle ;  that  the  idea  of  communion  with 
the  deity  in  a  sacrificial  meal  of  holy  food  was  primarily 
confined  to  the  zdhah,  or  animal  victim,  and  that  the  proper 
significance  of  the  cereal  offering  is  that  of  a  tribute  paid 
by  the  worshipper  from  the  produce  of  the  soil.  Now  we 
have  already  seen  that  the  conception  of  the  national 
deity  as  the  Baal,  or  lord  of  the  land,  was  developed  in 
connection  with  the  growth  of  agriculture  and  agricultural 
law.  Spots  of  natural  fertility  were  the  Baal's  land, 
because  they  were  productive  without  tlie  labour  of  man's 
hands,  which,  according  to  Eastern  ideas,  is  the  only  basis 
of  private  property  in  the  soil ;  and  land  which  required 
•irrigation  was  also  liable  to  the  payment  of  a  sacred 
tribute,  because  it  was  fertilised  by  streams  which  belonged 
to  the  god  or  even  were  conceived  as  instinct  with  divine 
energy.  This  whole  circle  of  ideas  belongs  to  a  condition 
of  society  in  which  agriculture  and  the  laws  that  regulate 
it  have  made  considerable  progress,  and  is  foreign  to  the 
sphere  of  thought  in  which  the  purely  nomadic  Semites 
moved.  That  the  minha  is  not  so  ancient  a  form  of 
sacrifice  as  the  zdbah  will  not  be  doubted,  for  nomadic  life 
is  older  than  agriculture.     But  if  the  foregoing  argument 

226 


LECT.  y\j. 


TITHES.  227 


is  correct,  we  can  say  more  than  this ;  we  can  afilrm  that 
the  idea  of  the  sacrificial  meal  as  an  act  of  communion  is 
older  than  sacrifice  in  the  sense  of  tribute,  and  that  the 
latter  notion  grew  up  with  the  development  of  agricultural 
life  and  the  conception  of  the  deity  as  Baal  of  the  land. 
Among  the  nomadic  Arabs  the  idea  of  sacrificial  tribute 
has  little  or  no  place ;  all  sacrifices  are  free-will  offerings, 
and  except  in  some  rare  forms  of  piacular  oblation — 
particularly  human  sacrifice — and  perhaps  in  some  very 
simple  offerings  such  as  the  libation  of  milk,  the  object 
of  the  sacrifice  is  to  provide  the  material  for  an  act  of 
sacrificial  communion  with  the  god.' 

In  most  ancient  nations  the  idea  of  sacrificial  tribute  is 
most  clearly  marked  in  the  institution  of  the  sacred  tithe, 
which  was  paid  to  the  gods  from  the  produce  of  the  soil, 
and  sometimes  also  from  other  sources  of  revenue.^  In 
antiquity  tithe  and  tribute  are  practically  identical,  nor  is 
the  name  of  tithe  strictly  limited  to  tributes  of  one-tenth, 
the  term  being  used  to  cover  any  impost  paid  in  kind  upon 
a  fixed  scale.  Such  taxes  play  a  great  part  in  the 
revenues  of  Eastern  sovereigns,  and  have  done  so  from  a 
very  early  date.  The  Babylonian  kings  drew  a  tithe  from 
imports,^  and  the  tithe  of  the  fruits  of  the  soil  had  the 
first  place  among  the  revenues  of  the  Persian  satraps.* 
The  Hebrew  kings  in  like  manner  took  tithes  of  their 
subjects,  and  the  tribute  in  kind  which  Solomon  drew 
from  the  provinces  for  the  support   of   his  household  may 

1  Some  points  connected  with  tliis  statement  which  invite  attention,  but 
cannot  be  fully  discussed  at  the  jn'esent  stage  of  the  argument,  will  be 
considered  in  Additional  Note  F,  Sacred  Tribute  in  Arabia. 

-  See  the  instances  collected  by  Spencer,  Lib.  iii.  cap.  10,  §  1  ;  Hermann, 
Gottesdienstliche  Allerth.  d.  G'riechen,  2nd  ed.  §  20,  note  4  ;  Wyttenbach  in 
the  index  to  his  edition  of  Plutarch's  Moralia,  s.v.  'HfuxXrit. 

3  Arist.,  (Econ.  p.  13526  of  the  Berlin  edition.  A  tithe  on  imports  is 
found  also  at  Mecca  (Azraci,  p.  107). 

*  Arist,  (Econ.  p.  1345^. 


228  THE   TITHE    IN 


I.ECT.   VII. 


be  regaixled  as  an  impost  of  this  sort.^  Thus  the  in- 
stitution of  a  sacred  tithe  corresponds  to  the  conception 
of  the  national  god  as  a  king,  and  so  at  Tyre  tithes  were 
paid  to  Melcarth,  "  the  king  of  the  city."  The  Cartha- 
ginians, as  Diodorus  2  tells  us,  sent  the  tithe  of  produce 
to  Tyre  annually  from  the  time  of  the  foundation  of  their 
city.  This  is  the  earliest  example  of  a  Semitic  sacred 
tithe  of  which  we  have  any  exact  account,  and  it  is  to  he 
noted  that  it  is  as  much  a  political  as  a  religious  tribute ; 
for  the  temple  of  Melcarth  was  the  state  treasury  of  Tyre, 
and  it  is  impossible  to  draw  a  distinction  between  the 
sacred  tithe  paid  by  the  Carthaginians  and  the  political 
tribute  paid  by  other  colonies,  such  as  Utica.^ 

The  oldest  Hebrew  laws  require  the  payment  of  first- 
fruits,  but  know  nothing  of  a  tithe  due  at  the  sanctuary. 
And  indeed  the  Hebrew  sanctuaries  in  old  time  had  not 
such  a  splendid  establishment  as  called  for  the  imposition 
of  sacred  tributes  on  a  large  scale.  When  Solomon 
erected  his  temple,  in  emulation  of  Hiram's  great  buildings 
at  Tyre,  a  more  lavish  ritual  expenditure  became  necessary ; 
but  as  the  temple  at  Jerusalem  was  attached  to  the  palace, 
this  was  part  of  the  household  expenditure  of  the  sovereign, 
and  doubtless  was  met  out  of  the  imposts  in  natiira  levied 
for  the  maintenance  of  the  court.'*  In  other  words,  the 
maintenance  of  the  royal  sanctuary  was  a  charge  on  the 
king's  tithes ;  and  so  we  find  that  a  tenth  directly  paid 
to  the  sanctuary  forms  no  part  of   the    temple   revenues 

^  1  Sam.  vii.  15,  17  ;  1  Kings  iv.  7  sqq.  The  "king's  mowings"  (Amos 
vii.  1)  belong  to  the  same  class  of  imposts,  being  a  tribute  in  kind  levied  on  the 
spring  herbage  to  feed  the  horses  of  the  king  (of.  1  Kings  xviii.  5).  Simi- 
larly the  Romans  in  Syria  levied  a  tax  on  pasture-land  in  the  month  Nisan 
for  the  food  of  their  horses:  see  Bruns  and  Sachau,  Syrisch- Rom.  liechts- 
huch,  Text  L,  §  121;  and  Wright,  Notulm  Syriacce  (1887),  p.  6. 

-  Lib.  XX.  cap.  14. 

^  Jos.,  Antt.  viii.  5.  3,  as  read  by  Niese  after  Gutschmid. 

*  Cf.  2  Kings  xvi.  15  ;  Ezek.  xlv.  9  sqq. 


LECT.    Vlt. 


OLD    ISRAEL.  229 


referred  to  in  2  Kings  xii.  4.  In  northern  Israel  the 
royal  sanctuaries,  of  which  Bethel  was  the  chief,^  were 
originally  maintained,  in  the  same  way,  by  the  king 
himself ;  but  as  Bethel  was  not  the  ordinary  seat  of  the 
court,  so  that  the  usual  stated  sacrifices  there  could  not 
be  combined  with  the  maintenance  of  the  king's  table, 
some  special  provision  must  have  been  made  for  them. 
As  the  new  and  elaborate  type  of  sanctuary  was  due  to 
Phccnician  influence,  it  was  Phoenicia,  where  the  religious 
tithe  was  an  ancient  institution,  which  would  naturally 
suggest  the  source  from  which  a  more  splendid  worship 
should  be  defrayed ;  the  service  of  the  god  of  the  land 
ought  to  be  a  burden  on  the  land.  And  the  general 
analogy  of  fiscal  arrangements  in  the  East  makes  it 
probable  that  this  would  be  done  by  assigning  to  the 
sanctuary  the  taxes  in  kind  levied  on  the  surrounding 
district ;  ^  it  is  therefore  noteworthy  that  the  only  pre- 
Deuteronomic  references  to  a  tithe  paid  at  the  sanctuary 
refer  to  the  "  royal  chapel "  of  Bethel.' 

The  tithes  paid  to  ancient  sanctuaries  were  spent  in 
various  ways,  and  were  by  no  means,  what  the  Hebrew 
tithes  ultimately  became  under  the  hierocracy,  a  revenue 
appropriated  to  the  maintenance  of  the  priests ;  thus  in 
South  Arabia  we  find  tithes  devoted  to  the  erection  of 
sacred  monuments.*  One  of  the  chief  objects,  however, 
for  which  they  were  expended  was  the  maintenance  of 
feasts  and  sacrifices  of  a  public  character,  at  which  the 
worshippers  were  entertained  free  of  charge.*     This  element 

'  Amos  vii.  13. 

-  Cf.  the  prant  of  the  village  of  Baetocaeco  for  the  maintenance  of  the 
sanctuary  of  the  place,  Waddington,  No.  2720a. 

••  Gen.  xxviii.  22  ;  Amos  iv.  4. 

*  Monltni.  unci  Miiller,  Sab.  Denhn.  No.  11. 

'  Xen.,Anab.  v.  3.  9 ;  Waddington,  ut  supra.  Similarly  the  tithes  of  incense 
jiaid  to  the  priests  at  Sabota  in  South  Arahia  were  s[>ent  on  the  feas  which  the 
god  spread  for  his  guests  for  a  certain  number  of  days  (Pliny,  //.  N  xii.  63). 


230  THE   TITHE   IN 


LECT.   VIT. 


cannot  have  been  lacking  at  the  royal  sanctuaries  of  the 
Hebrews,  for  a  splendid  hospitality  to  all  and  sundry  who 
assembled  at  the  great  religious  feasts  was  recognised  as 
the  duty  of  the  king  even  in  the  time  of  David.^  And 
so  we  find  that  Amos  enumerates  the  tithe  at  Bethel  as 
one  of  the  chief  elements  that  contributed  to  the  jovial 
luxurious  worship  maintained  at  that  holy  place. 

If  this  account  of  the  matter  is  correct,  the  tithes 
collected  at  Bethel  were  strictly  of  the  nature  of  a  tribute 
gathered  from  certain  lands,  and  payment  of  them  was 
doubtless  enforced  by  royal  authority.  They  were  not 
used  by  each  man  to  make  a  private  religious  feast  for 
himself  and  his  family,  but  were  devoted  to  the  mainten- 
ance of  the  public  or  royal  sacrifices,  at  which  there  was 
a  great  deal  of  mirth  and  banqueting,  but  the  persons 
who  enjoyed  the  feast  were  not  necessarily  those  who 
furnished  the  supplies.  This,  it  ought  to  be  said,  is  not 
the  view  commonly  taken  by  modern  critics.  The  old 
festivities  at  Hebrew  sanctuaries  before  the  regal  period 
were  maintained,  not  out  of  any  public  revenue,  but  by 
each  man  bringing  up  to  the  sanctuary  his  own  victim 
and  all  else  that  was  necessary  to  make  up  a  hearty  feast, 
with  the  sacrificial  flesh  as  its  pike  de  resistance^  It  is 
generally  assumed  that  this  description  was  still  applicable 
to  the  feasts  at  Bethel  in  Amos's  time,  and  that  the  tithes 
were  the  provision  that  each  farmer  brought  with  him  to 
feast  his  domestic  circle  and  friends.  At  first  sight  this 
view  looks  plausible  enough,  especially  when  we  find  that 
the  Book  of  Deuteronomy,  written  a  century  after  Amos 
prophesied,  actually  prescribes  that  the  annual  tithes  should 
be  used  by  each  householder  to  furnish  forth  a  family 
feast  before  Jehovah.  But  it  is  not  safe  to  argue  back 
from  the  reforming  ordinances  of  Deuteronomy  to  the 
1  2  Sam.  vi.  19.  »  1  Sam.  i.  21,  24,  x.  3. 


LECT.  Yii.  OLD    ISRAEL.  231 

practices  of  the  northern  sanctuaries,  without  checking  tlie 
inference  at  every  point.  The  connection  between  tithe 
and  tribute  is  too  close  and  too  ancient  to  allow  us  to 
admit  without  hesitation  that  the  Deuteronomic  annual 
tithe,  which  retains  nothing  of  the  character  of  a  tribute, 
is  the  primitive  type  of  the  institution.  And  this  difficulty 
is  not  diminished  when  we  observe  that  the  Book  of 
Deuteronomy  recognises  also  another  tithe,  payable  once 
in  three  years,  which  really  is  of  the  nature  of  a  sacred 
tribute,  although  it  is  devoted  not  to  the  altar  but  to 
charity.  It  is  arbitrary  to  say  that  the  first  tithe  of 
Deuteronomy  corresponds  to  ancient  usage,  and  that  the 
second  is  an  innovation  of  the  author ;  indeed  some 
indications  of  the  Book  of  Deuteronomy  itself  point  all 
the  other  way.  In  Deut.  xxvi.  12  the  third  year,  in 
which  the  charity  tithe  is  to  be  paid,  is  called  yar  excellence 
"  the  year  of  tithing,"  and  in  the  following  verse  the 
charity  tithe  is  reckoned  in  the  list  of  "  holy  things," 
while  the  annual  tithe,  to  be  spent  on  family  festivities 
at  the  sanctuary,  is  not  so  reckoned.  In  the  face  of  these 
difficulties  it  is  not  safe  to  assume  that  either  of  the 
Deuteronomic  tithes  exactly  corresponds  to  old  usage. 
And,  if  we  look  at  Amos's  account  of  the  worship  at 
Bethel  as  a  whole,  a  feature  which  cannot  fail  to  strike 
us  is  that  the  luxurious  feasts  beside  the  altars  which 
he  describes  are  entirely  different  in  kind  from  the  old 
rustic  festivities  at  Shiloh  described  in  1  Samuel.  They 
are  not  simple  agricultural  merry-makings  of  a  popular 
character,  but  mainly  feasts  of  the  rich,  enjoying  them- 
selves at  the  expense  of  the  poor.  The  keynote  struck  in 
chap.  ii.  7,  8,  where  the  sanctuary  itself  is  designated  as  the 
seat  of  oppression  and  extortion,  is  re-echoed  all  through 
the  book ;  Amos's  charge  against  the  nobles  is  not  that 
they  are  professedly  religious  and  yet  oppressors,  but  that 


232  THE   TITHE    IN 


LECT.   VII. 


their  luxurious  religion  is  founded  on  oppression,  on  the 
gains  of  corruption  at  the  sacred  tribunal  and  other  forms 
of  extortion.  This  is  not  the  description  of  a  primitive 
agricultural  worship,  and  not  the  association  in  which  we 
can  look  for  the  idyllic  simplicity  of  the  Deuteronomic 
family  feast  of  tithes.  But  it  is  the  very  association  in 
which  one  expects  to  find  the  tithe  as  I  have  supposed  it 
to  be ;  and  I  do  not  hesitate  to  conclude  that  the  tribute 
of  wheat  taken  from  the  poor,  which  is  set  forth  among 
the  extortions  of  Bethel  in  Amos  v.  11,  is  nothing  else 
than  the  tithe  itself.  The  poor  paid  the  sacred  tribute, 
but  it  was  the  rich  who  were  invited  to  the  public  banquet 
it  furnished  forth.  The  revenues  of  the  state  religion, 
originally  designed  to  maintain  a  public  hospitality  at  the 
altar,  and  enable  rich  and  poor  alike  to  rejoice  before  their 
God,  were  monopolised  by  a  privileged  class,  and  were 
exacted  with  the  unsparing  severity  which  usually  attends 
such  misappropriation. 

This  being  understood,  the  innovations  in  the  law  of 
tithes  proposed  in  the  Book  of  Deuteronomy  become 
sufficiently  intelligible.  In  the  kingdom  of  Judah  there 
was  no  royal  sanctuary  except  that  at  Jerusalem,  the 
maintenance  of  which  was  part  of  the  king's  household 
charges,  and  it  is  hardly  probable  that  any  part  of  the 
royal  tithes  was  assigned  to  the  maintenance  of  the  local 
sanctuaries.  But  as  early  as  the  time  of  Samuel  we  find 
religious  feasts  of  clans  or  of  towns,  which  are  not  a  mere 
agglomeration  of  private  sacrifices,  and  so  must  have  been 
defrayed  out  of  communal  funds ;  from  this  germ,  as 
religion  became  more  luxurious,  a  fixed  impost  on  land  for 
the  maintenance  of  the  public  services,  such  as  was 
collected  among  the  Phoenicians,  would  naturally  grow. 
Such  an  impost  would  be  in  the  hands,  not  of  the  priests, 
but  of  the  heads  of  clans  and  communes,  i.e.  of  the  rich, 


LECT.   VIl. 


OLD    ISRAEL.  233 


and  would  necessarily  be  liable  to  the  same  abuses  as 
prevailed  in  the  northern  kingdom.  The  remedy  which 
Deuteronomy  proposes  for  these  abuses  is  to  leave  each 
farmer  to  spend  his  own  tithes  as  he  pleases  at  the  central 
sanctuary.  But  this  provision,  if  it  had  stood  alone,  would 
have  amounted  to  the  total  abolition  of  a  communal  fund 
wliich,  however  much  abused  in  practice,  M'as  theoretically 
designed  for  the  maintenance  of  a  public  table,  where 
every  one  had  a  right  to  claim  a  portion,  and  which  was 
doubtless  of  some  service  to  the  landless  proletariate,  how- 
ever hardly  its  collection  might  press  on  the  poorer  farmer.^ 
This  difliculty  was  met  by  the  triennial  tithe  devoted  to 
cliarity,  to  the  landless  poor  and  to  the  landless  Levite. 
Strictly  speaking,  this  triennial  due  was  the  only  real 
tithe  left — the  only  impost  for  a  religious  purpose  which 
a  man  was  actually  bound  to  pay  away — and  to  it  the 
whole  subsequent  history  of  Hebrew  tithes  attaches  itself. 
The  other  tithe,  which  was  not  a  due  but  of  a  mere  volun- 
tary character,  disappears  altogether  in  the  Levitical 
legislation. 

If  this  account  of  the  Hebrew  tithe  is  correct,  that 
institution  is  of  relatively  modern  origin — as  indeed  is 
indicated  by  the  silence  of  the  most  ancient  laws — and 
throws  very  little  light  on  the  original  principles  of 
Semitic  sacrifice.  The  principle  that  the  god  of  the  land 
claims  a  tribute  on  the  increase  of  the  soil  was  originally 
expressed  in  the  offering  of  first-fruits,  at  a  time  when 
sanctuaries  and  their  service  were  too  simple  to  need  any 
elaborate  provision  for  their  support.  The  tithe  originated 
when  worship  became  more  complex  and  ritual  more 
splendid,  so   that   a  fixed   tribute  was   necessary   for    its 

^  The  same  princiiile  was  acknowledged  in  Greece,  iri  tZv  Upu*  ykp  oittux"' 
^uTiy  (Schol.  on  Aiistoph.  Plutits,  .596,  in  Hermann  o;j.  cit.  §  l[>,  note  16).  So 
too  in  the  Arabian  meal-offering  to  Ucaisir  {svjjra,  ji.  206). 


234  TITHES    AND  lect.  vii. 

maiutenance.  The  tribute  took  the  shape  of  an  impost  on 
the  produce  of  laud,  partly  because  this  was  an  ordinary 
source  of  revenue  for  all  public  purposes,  partly  because 
such  an  impost  could  be  justified  from  the  religious  point 
of  view,  as  agreeing  in  principle  with  the  oblation  of  first- 
fruits,  and  constituting  a  tribute  to  the  god  from  the 
agricultural  blessings  he  bestowed.  But  here  the  similarity 
between  tithes  and  first-fruits  ends.  The  first-fruits  consti- 
tuted a  private  sacrifice  of  the  worshipper,  who  brought 
them  himself  to  the  altar  and  was  answerable  for  the  pay- 
ment only  to  God  and  his  own  conscience.  The  tithe,  on  the 
contrary,  was  a  public  burden  enforced  by  the  community 
for  the  maintenance  of  public  religion.  In  principle  there 
was  no  reason  why  it  should  not  be  employed  for  any 
purpose,  connected  with  the  public  exercises  of  religion, 
for  which  money  or  money's  worth  was  required ;  the  way 
in  which  it  should  be  spent  depended  not  on  the  individual 
tithe-payer  but  on  the  sovereign  or  the  commune.  In 
later  times,  after  the  exile,  it  was  entirely  appropriated  to 
the  support  of  the  clergy.  But  in  old  Israel  it  seems  to 
have  been  mainly,  if  not  exclusively,  used  to  furnish  forth 
public  feasts  at  the  sanctuary.  In  this  respect  it  entirely 
differed  from  the  first-fruits,  which  might  be,  and  generally 
were,  offered  at  a  public  festival,  but  did  not  supply  any 
part  of  the  material  of  the  feast.  The  sacred  feast,  at 
which  men  and  their  god  ate  together,  was  originally  quite 
unconnected  with  the  cereal  oblations  paid  in  tribute  to 
the  deity,  and  its  staple  was  the  zilah — the  sacrificial 
victim.  We  shall  see  by  and  by  that  in  its  origin  the 
zShali  was  not  the  private  offering  of  an  individual  house- 
holder but  the  sacrifice  of  a  clan,  and  so  the  sacrificial 
meal  had  pre-eminently  the  character  of  a  public  feast. 
Now  when  public  feasts  are  organised  on  a  considerable 
scale,  and  furnished  not  merely  with  store  of    sacrificial 


LECT.  VII.  PUBLIC   FEASTS.  235 

tlesh,  but — as  was  the  wont  in  Israel  under  the  kings — 
with  all  manner  of  luxurious  accessories,  they  come  to  be 
costly  afl'airs,  which  can  only  be  defrayed  out  of  public 
moneys.  The  Israel  of  the  time  of  the  kings  was  not  a 
simple  society  of  peasants,  all  living  in  the  same  way,  who 
could  simply  club  together  to  maintain  a  rustic  feast  by 
what  each  man  brought  to  the  sanctuary  from  his  own 
farm.  Splendid  festivals  like  those  of  Bethel  were  evi- 
dently not  furnished  in  this  way,  but  were  mainly  banquets 
of  the  upper  classes  in  which  the  poor  had  a  very  subordi- 
nate share.  The  source  of  these  festivals  was  the  tithe, 
but  it  was  not  the  poor  tithe-payer  who  figured  as  host  at 
the  banquet.  The  organisation  of  the  feast  was  in  the 
hands  of  the  ruling  classes,  who  received  the  tithes  and 
spent  them  on  the  service  in  a  way  that  gave  the  lion's 
share  of  the  good  things  to  themselves ;  though  no  doubt, 
as  in  other  ancient  countries,  the  principle  of  a  public  feast 
was  not  wholly  ignored,  and  every  one  present  had  some- 
thing to  eat  and  drink,  so  that  the  whole  populace  was  kept 
in  good  humour.^  Of  course  it  is  not  to  be  supposed  that 
the  whole  service  was  of  this  public  character.  Private 
persons  still  brought  up  their  own  vows  and  free-will 
offerings,  and  arranged  their  own  family  parties.  But 
these,  I  conceive,  were  quite  independent  of  the  tithes, 
which  were  a  public  tax  devoted  to  what  was  regarded  as 
the  public  part  of  religion.  On  the  whole,  tlierefore,  the 
tithe  system  has  nothing  to  do  with  primitive  Hebrew 
religion ;  the  only  point  about  it  whicli  casts  a  liglit  Ijack- 
wards  on  the  earlier  stages  of    worship  is  that  it   could 

^  The  only  way  of  escape  from  this  conclusion  is  to  suppose  that  the  rich 
nobles  paid  out  of  their  own  pockets  for  the  more  expensive  parts  of  the 
public  sacrifices  ;  and  no  one  who  knows  the  East  and  reads  tlic  liook  of 
Amos  will  believe  that.  Nathan's  parable  about  the  poor  man's  one  lamb, 
which  his  rich  neighbour  took  to  make  a  feast  (necessarily  at  that  date 
sacrificial),  is  an  apposite  illustration. 


236  SACRIFICIAL  LECT.  VII. 

hardly  have  sprung  up  except  in  connection  with  the  idea 
that  the  maintenance  of  sacrifice  was  a  public  duty,  and 
that  the  sacrificial  feast  had  essentially  a  public  character. 
This  point,  however,  is  of  the  highest  importance,  and  must 
be  kept  clearly  before  us  as  we  proceed. 

Long  before  any  public  revenue  was  set  apart  for  the 
maintenance  of  sacrificial  ritual,  the  ordinary  type  of 
Hebrew  worship  w^as  essentially  social,  for  in  antiquity  all 
religion  was  the  affair  of  the  community  rather  than  of  the 
individual.  A  sacrifice  was  a  public  ceremony  of  a  town- 
ship or  of  a  clan,^  and  private  householders  were  accustomed 
to  reserve  their  offerings  for  the  annual  feasts,  satisfying 
their  religious  feelings  in  the  interval  by  vows  to  be  dis- 
charged when  the  festal  season  came  round.^  Then  the 
crowds  streamed  into  the  sanctuary  from  all  sides,  dressed 
in  their  gayest  attire,^  marching  joyfully  to  the  sound  of 
music,*  and  bearing  with  them  not  only  the  victims 
appointed  for  sacrifice  but  store  of  bread  and  wine  to  set 
forth  the  feast.^  The  law  of  the  feast  was  open-handed 
hospitality;  no  sacrifice  was  complete  without  guests,  and 
portions  w^ere  freely  distributed  to  rich  and  poor  within 
the  circle  of    a  man's    acquaintance.*'     Universal  hilarity 

^  1  Sam.  ix.  12,  xx.  6.  In  the  latter  passage  "  family"  means  "  clan,"  not 
"domestic  circle."     See  below,  p.  258,  note. 

''  1  Sam.  i.  3,  21.  '  Hosea  ii.  15  (E.V.  13). 

*  Isa.  XXX.  29.  *  1  Sam.  x.  3. 

^  1  Sam.  ix.  13  ;  2  Sam.  vi.  19,  xv.  11  ;  Neli.  viii.  10.  The  guests  of 
the  sacrifice  supply  a  figure  to  the  prophets  (Ezek.  xxxix.  17  sqq. ;  Zeph. 
i.  7).  Nadab's  refusal  to  allow  David  to  share  in  his  sheep-shearing  feast 
was  not  only  churlish  but  a  breach  of  religious  custom ;  from  Amos  iv.  5  it 
would  appear  that  with  a  free-will  offering  there  was  a  free  invitation  to  all 
to  come  and  partake.  For  the  Arabian  usage  in  like  cases,  see  Wellhausen, 
p.  114  sq.  A  banqueting  hall  for  the  communal  sacrifice  is  mentioned  as 
early  as  1  Sam.  ix.  22,  and  the  name  given  to  it  {lishka)  seems  to  be  identical 
with  the  Greek  xia-xi,  from  which  it  may  be  gathered  that  the  Phoenicians 
had  similar  halls  from  an  early  date  ;  cf.  Judg.  ix.  27,  xvi.  23  sqq.  For 
the  communal  feasts  of  the  Syrians  in  later  times,  see  Posidon.  Apam.  a}). 
Athen.,  xii.  527  {Fr.  Hist.  Gr.  iii.  258). 


LKCT.  VII.  FESTIVALS.  237 


prevailed,  men  ate  .drank  and  were  merry  together,  rejoic- 
ing before  their  God.  The  picture  which  I  have  drawn  of 
the  dominant  type  of  Hebrew  worship  contains  nothint'- 
peculiar  to  the  religion  of  Jehovah.  It  is  clear  from  the 
Old  Testament  that  the  ritual  observances  at  a  Hebrew 
and  at  a  Canaanite  sanctuary  were  so  similar  that  to  the 
mass  of  the  people  Jehovah  worship  and  Baal  worship 
were  not  separated  by  any  well-marked  line,  and  that  in 
both  cases  the  prevailing  tone  and  temper  of  the  worshippers 
were  determined  by  the  festive  character  of  the  service. 
Nor  is  the  prevalence  of  the  sacrificial  feast,  as  the 
established  type  of  ordinary  religion,  confined  to  the 
Semitic  peoples  ;  the  same  kind  of  worship  ruled  in 
ancient  Greece  and  Italy,  and  seems  to  be  the  universal 
type  of  the  local  cults  of  the  small  agricultural  com- 
munities out  of  wdiich  all  the  nations  of  ancient  civilisation 
grew.  Everywhere  we  find  that  a  sacrifice  ordinarily 
involves  a  feast,  and  that  a  feast  cannot  be  provided  with- 
out a  sacrifice.  For  a  feast  is  not  complete  without  flesh, 
and  in  early  times  the  rule  that  all  slaughter  is  sacrifice 
was  not  confined  to  the  Semites.^  The  identity  of  religious 
occasions  and  festal  seasons  may  indeed  be  taken  as  the 
determining  characteristic  of  the  type  of  ancient  reli^-ion 
generally  ;  when  men  meet  their  god  they  feast  and  are 
glad  together,  and  whenever  they  feast  and  are  glad  they 
desire  that  the  god  should  be  of  the  party.  This  view  is 
proper  to  religions  in  which  the  habitual  temper  of  the 
worshippers  is  one  of  joyous  confidence  in  their  god,  un- 
troubled by  any  habitual  sense  of  human  guilt,  and  resting 

^  It  is  Indian  (Manu,  v.  31  sqq.)  and  Persian  (Sprengcr,  Ei-niiische  Al/ert/i. 
iii.  57S.  Cf.  Herod,  i.  132;  Strabo,  xv.  3.  13,  p.  732).  Among  tlie  Konians 
and  the  older  Greeks  there  was  something  sacrificial  about  every  feast,  or 
even  about  every  social  meal ;  in  the  latter  case  the  Romans  paid  tribute  to 
the  household  gods.  On  tlie  identity  of  feast  and  sacrifice  in  Greece,  see 
Atheuaius,  v.  19  ;  Buchholz,  IIo7n.  Bealien,  II.  ii.  202,  213  sqq. 


238  MEANING   OF  lf.ct.  vii. 

on  the  firm  conviction  that  tliey  and  the  deity  they  adore 
are  good  friends,  who  understand  each  other  perfectly  and 
are  united  by  bonds  not  easily  broken.  The  basis  of  this 
confidence  lies  of  course  in  the  view  that  the  gods  are  part 
and  parcel  of  the  same  natural  community  with  their 
worshippers.  The  divine  father  or  king  claims  the  same 
kind  of  respect  and  service  as  a  human  father  or  king,  and 
practical  religion  is  simply  a  branch  of  social  duty,  an 
understood  part  of  the  conduct  of  daily  life,  governed  by 
fixed  rules  to  which  every  one  has  been  trained  from  his 
infancy.  No  man  who  is  a  good  citizen,  living  up  to  the 
ordinary  standard  of  civil  morality  in  his  dealings  with  his 
neighbours,  and  accurately  following  the  ritual  tradition  in 
his  worship  of  the  gods,  is  oppressed  with  the  fear  that  the 
deity  may  set  a  higher  standard  of  conduct  and  find  him 
wanting.  Civil  and  religious  morality  have  one  and  the 
same  measure,  and  the  conduct  which  suffices  to  secure  the 
esteem  of  men  suffices  also  to  make  a  man  perfectly  easy 
as  to  his  standing  with  the  gods.  It  must  be  remembered 
that  all  antique  morality  is  an  affair  of  social  custom  and 
customary  law,  and  that  in  the  more  primitive  forms  of 
ancient  life  the  force  of  custom  is  so  strong  that  there  is 
hardly  any  middle  course  between  living  well  up  to  the 
standard  of  social  duty  which  it  prescribes,  and  falling 
altogether  outside  the  pale  of  the  civil  and  religious  com- 
munity. A  man  wlio  deliberately  sets  himself  against  the 
rules  of  the  society  in  which  he  lives  must  expect  to  be 
outlawed,  but  minor  offences  are  readily  condoned  as  mere 
mistakes,  which  may  expose  the  offender  to  a  fine  but  do 
not  permanently  lower  his  social  status  or  his  self-respect. 
So  too  a  man  may  offend  his  god,  and  be  called  upon  to 
make  reparation  to  him.  But  in  such  a  case  he  knows,  or 
can  learn  from  a  competent  priestly  authority,  exactly  what 
he  ought  to  do  to  set  matters  right,  and  then  everything 


LECT.  VII.  SACRIFICIAL   FEASTS.  2.39 

goes  on  as  before.  lu  a  religion  of  this  kind  there  is  no 
room  for  an  abiding  sense  of  sin  and  unwortliiness,  or  for 
acts  of  worship  that  express  the  struggle  after  an  unattained 
righteousness,  the  longing  for  uncertain  forgiveness.  It  is 
only  when  the  old  religions  begin  to  break  down  that  these 
feelings  come  in.  The  older  national  and  tribal  religions 
work  with  the  smoothness  of  a  machine.  ]\Ien  are  satis- 
fied with  their  gods,  and  they  feel  that  the  gods  are 
satisfied  with  them.  Or  if  at  any  time  famine,  pestilence 
or  disaster  in  war  appears  to  shew  that  the  gods  are  angry, 
this  casts  no  doubt  on  the  adequacy  of  the  religious  system 
as  such,  but  is  merely  held  to  prove  that  a  grave  fault  has 
been  committed  by  some  one  for  whom  the  community  is 
responsible,  and  that  they  are  bound  to  put  it  right  by  an 
appropriate  reparation.  That  they  can  put  it  right,  and 
stand  as  well  with  the  god  as  they  ever  did,  is  not  doubted  ; 
and  when  rain  falls,  or  the  pestilence  is  checked,  or  the 
defeat  is  retrieved,  they  at  once  recover  their  old  easy 
confidence,  and  go  on  eating  and  drinking  and  rejoicing 
before  their  god  with  the  assurance  that  he  and  they  are 
on  the  best  of  jovial  good  terms. 

The  kind  of  religion  which  finds  its  proper  a:>sthetic 
expression  in  the  merry  sacrificial  feast  implies  a  habit  of 
mind,  a  way  of  taking  the  world  as  well  as  a  way  of 
regarding  the  gods,  which  we  have  some  difficulty  in 
realising.  Human  life  is  never  perfectly  happy  and  satis- 
factory, yet  ancient  religion  assumes  that  through  the  help 
of  the  gods  it  is  so  happy  and  satisfactory  that  ordinary 
acts  of  worship  are  all  brightness  and  hilarity,  expressing 
no  other  idea  than  that  the  worshippers  are  well  content 
with  themselves  and  with  their  divine  sovereign.  This 
implies  a  measure  of  insouciance,  a  power  of  casting  off  the 
past  and  living  in  the  impression  of  the  moment,  which 
belongs  to  the  childhood  of  humanity,  and  can  exist  only 


240  THE   GODS   AND  lect.  vir. 

aloii2  with  a  childish  unconsciousness  of  the  inexorable 
laws  that  connect  the  present  and  the  future  with  the 
past.  Accordingly  the  more  developed  nations  of  antiquity, 
in  proportion  as  they  emerged  from  national  childhood, 
began  to  find  the  old  religious  forms  inadequate,  and  either 
became  less  concerned  to  associate  all  their  happiness  with 
the  worship  of  the  gods,  and,  in  a  word,  less  religious,  or 
else  were  unable  to  think  of  the  divine  powers  as  habitually 
well  pleased  and  favourable,  and  so  were  driven  to  look  on 
the  anger  of  the  gods  as  much  more  frequent  and  permanent 
than  their  fathers  had  supposed,  and  to  give  to  atoning 
rites  a  stated  and  important  place  in  ritual,  which  went 
far  to  change  the  whole  attitude  characteristic  of  early 
worship,  and  substitute  for  the  old  joyous  confidence  a 
painful  and  scrupulous  anxiety  in  all  approach  to  the  gods. 
Among  the  Semites  the  Arabs  furnish  an  example  of  the 
general  decay  of  religion,  while  the  nations  of  Palestine  in 
the  seventh  century  B.C.  afford  an  excellent  illustration  of 
the  development  of  a  gloomier  type  of  worship  under  the 
pressure  of  accumulated  political  disasters.  On  the  whole, 
however,  what  strikes  the  modern  thinker  as  surprising  is 
not  that  the  old  joyous  type  of  worship  ultimately  broke 
down,  but  that  it  lasted  so  long  as  it  did,  or  even  that  it 
ever  attained  a  paramount  place  among  nations  so  advanced 
as  the  Greeks  and  the  Syrians.  This  is  a  matter  which 
well  deserves  attentive  consideration. 

First  of  all,  then,  it  is  to  be  observed  that  the  frame 
of  mind  in  which  men  are  well  pleased  with  themselves, 
with  their  gods,  and  with  the  world,  could  not  have 
dominated  antique  religion  as  it  did,  unless  religion  had 
been  essentially  the  affair  of  the  community  rather  than 
of  individuals.  It  was  not  the  business  of  the  gods  of 
heathenism  to  watch,  by  a  series  of  special  providences, 
over  the   welfare   of   every  individual.       It   is    true   that 


LECT.  VII.  THEIR   WORSHirPERS.  241 


individuals  laid  their  private  affairs  before  the  gods,  and 
asked  with  prayers  and  vows  for  strictly  personal  blessings. 
But  tliey  did  this  just  as  they  might  crave  a  personal 
boon  from  a  king,  or  as  a  son  craves  a  boon  from  a  father, 
without  expecting  to  get  all  tliat  was  asked.  AVhat  the 
gods  might  do  in  tliis  way  was  done  as  a  matter  of 
personal  favour,  and  was  no  part  of  their  proper  function 
as  heads  of  the  community.  The  benefits  wdiich  were 
expected  from  the  gods  were  of  a  public  character,  affect- 
ing the  whole  community,  especially  fruitful  seasons, 
increase  of  flocks  and  herds,  and  success  in  war.  So  long 
as  the  community  flourished  the  fact  that  an  individual 
was  miserable  reflected  no  discredit  on  divine  providence, 
but  was  rather  taken  to  prove  that  tlie  sufferer  was  an 
evil-doer,  justly  hateful  to  the  gods.  Such  a  man  was  out 
of  place  among  the  happy  and  prosperous  crowd  that 
assembled  on  feast  days  before  the  altar ;  even  in  Israel 
Hannah,  with  her  sad  face  and  silent  petition,  was  a  strange 
figure  at  the  sanctuary  of  Shiloh,  and  the  unhappy  leper, 
in  his  lifelong  affliction,  was  shut  out  from  the  exercises 
of  religion  as  well  as  from  the  privileges  of  social  life. 
So  too  the  mourner  was  unclean,  and  his  food  was  not 
brought  into  the  house  of  God ;  the  very  occasions  of  life 
in  which  spiritual  things  are  nearest  to  the  Christian,  and 
the  comfort  of  religion  is  most  fervently  sought,  were  in 
the  ancient  world  the  times  when  a  man  was  forbidden 
to  approach  the  seat  of  God's  presence.  To  us,  whose 
habit  it  is  to  look  at  religion  in  its  influence  on  the  life 
and  happiness  of  individuals,  this  seems  a  cruel  law ;  nay, 
our  sense  of  justice  is  offended  by  a  system  in  which 
misfortunes  set  up  a  barrier  between  a  man  and  his  God. 
But  whether  in  civil  or  in  profane  matters,  the  habit  of 
the  old  world  was  to  think  much  of  the  community  and 
little   of   the   individual  life,   and   no  one  felt  this  to  be 

Q 


242  JOYOUS    CHARACTER  lect.  vil. 


unjust  even  though  it  bore  hardly  on  himself.  The  god 
was  the  god  of  the  nation  or  of  the  tribe,  and  he  knew 
and  cared  for  the  individual  only  as  a  member  of  the 
community.  Why,  then,  should  private  misfortune  be 
allowed  to  mar  by  its  ill-omened  presence  the  public  glad- 
ness of  the  sanctuary  ? 

Accordingly  the  air  of  habitual  satisfaction  with  them- 
selves, their  gods  and  the  world,  which  characterises  the 
worship  of  ancient  communities,  must  be  explained  without 
reference  to  the  vicissitudes  of  individual  life.  And  so  far 
as  the  thing  requires  any  other  explanation  than  the 
general  insouciance  and  absorption  in  the  feelings  of  the 
moment  characteristic  of  the  childhood  of  society,  I  appre- 
hend that  the  key  to  the  joyful  character  of  the  antique 
religions  known  to  us  lies  in  the  fact  that  they  took  their 
shape  in  communities  that  were  progressive  and  on  the 
whole  prosperous.  If  we  realise  to  ourselves  the  conditions 
of  early  society,  whether  in  Europe  or  in  Asia,  at  the 
first  daybreak  of  history,  we  cannot  fail  to  see  that  a  tribe 
or  nation  that  could  not  hold  its  own  and  make  headway 
must  soon  have  been  crushed  out  of  existence  in  the 
incessant  feuds  it  had  to  wage  with  all  its  neighbours. 
The  communities  of  ancient  civilisation  were  formed  by 
the  survival  of  the  fittest,  and  they  had  all  the  self- 
confidence  and  elasticity  that  are  engendered  by  success 
in  the  struggle  for  life.  These  characters,  therefore,  are 
reflected  in  the  religious  system  that  grew  up  with  the 
growth  of  the  state,  and  the  type  of  worship  that  corre- 
sponded to  them  was  not  felt  to  be  inadequate  till  the 
political  system  was  undermined  from  within  or  shattered 
by  blows  from  without. 

These  considerations  sufficiently  account  for  the  develop- 
ment of  the  habitual  joyous  temper  of  ancient  sacrificial 
worship.     But  it   is   also   to  be  observed   that  when  the 


LECT.  vir.  OF    ANCIENT    RELIGION.  243 

type  was  once  formed  it  would  not  at  once  disappear,  even 
when  a  change  in  social  conditions  made  it  no  longer  an 
adequate  expression  of  the  habitual  tone  of  national  life. 
The  most  important  functions  of  ancient  worship  were 
reserved  for  public  occasions,  when  the  whole  community 
was  stirred  by  a  common  emotion ;  and  among  agricultural 
nations  the  stated  occasions  of  sacrifice  were  tlie  natural 
seasons  of  festivity,  at  harvest  and  vintage.  At  such  times 
every  one  was  ready  to  cast  otf  his  cares  and  rejoice  before 
his  god,  and  so  the  coincidence  of  religious  and  agricultural 
gladness  helpetl  to  keep  the  old  form  of  worship  alive, 
long  after  it  had  ceased  to  be  in  full  harmony  with  men's 
permanent  view  of  the  world.  Moreover  it  must  be 
remembered  that  the  spirit  of  boisterous  mirth  which 
characterised  the  oldest  religious  festivals  was  nourished 
by  the  act  of  worship  itself.  The  sacrificial  feast  was  not 
only  an  expression  of  gladness  but  a  means  of  driving 
away  care,  for  it  was  set  forth  with  every  circumstance  of 
gaiety,  with  garlands,  perfumes  and  music,  as  well  as  with 
store  of  meat  and  wine.  The  sensuous  Oriental  nature 
responds  to  such  physical  stimulus  with  a  readiness  foreign 
to  our  more  sluggish  temperament ;  to  the  Arab  it  is  an 
excitement  and  a  delight  of  the  highest  order  merely  to 
have  flesh  to  eat.^  From  the  earliest  times,  therefore,  the 
religious  gladness  of  the  Semites  tended  to  assume  an 
orgiastic  character  and  become  a  sort  of  intoxication  of 
the  senses,  in  which  anxiety  and  sorrow  were  drowned 
for  the  moment.  This  is  apparent  in  the  old  Canaanite 
festivals,  such  as  the  vintage  feast  at  Shechem  described 
in  Judg.  ix.  27,  and  not  less  in  the  service  of  the  Hebrew 


'  A  current  Arabic  .saying,  which  I  have  somewhere  seen  ascribed  to 
Taiihbata  Sliiirran,  reckons  the  catin^;  of  flesh  as  one  of  the  three  f^reat 
deliglits  of  life.  In  MaiJiini,  ii,  22,  flesh  and  wine  are  classed  together  as 
seductive  luxuries. 


244  0RGIAS5TIC 


LECT.   VII. 


high  places,  as  it  is  characterised  by  the  prophets.  Even 
at  Jerusalem  the  worship  must  have  been  boisterous 
indeed,  when  Lam.  ii.  7  compares  the  shouts  of  the  storm- 
ing party  of  the  Chaldaeans  in  the  courts  of  the  temple 
with  the  noise  of  a  solemn  feast.  Among  the  Nabatiieans 
and  elsewhere  the  orgiastic  character  of  the  worship  often 
led  in  later  times  to  the  identification  of  Semitic  gods, 
especially  of  Dusares,  with  the  Greek  Dionysus.  It  is 
plain  that  a  religion  of  this  sort  would  not  necessarily 
cease  to  be  powerful  when  it  ceased  to  express  a  habitu- 
ally joyous  view  of  the  world  and  the  divine  governance ; 
in  evil  times,  when  men's  thoughts  were  habitually  sombre, 
they  betook  themselves  to  the  physical  excitement  of 
religion,  as  men  now  take  refuge  in  wine.  That  this  is 
not  a  fancy  picture  is  clear  from  Isaiah's  description  of 
the  conduct  of  his  contemporaries  during  the  approach  of 
the  Assyrians  to  Jerusalem,^  when  the  multiplied  sacrifices 
that  were  offered  to  avert  the  disaster  degenerated  into  a 
drunken  carnival — "  Let  us  eat  and  drink,  for  to-morrow 
we  die."  And  so  in  general  when  an  act  of  Semitic 
worship  began  with  sorrow  and  lamentation — as  in  the 
mourning  for  Adonis,  or  in  the  great  atoning  ceremonies 
which  became  common  in  later  times — a  swift  revulsion 
of  feeling  followed,  and  the  gloomy  part  of  the  ser- 
vice was  presently  succeeded  by  a  burst  of  hilarious 
revelry,  which,  in  later  times  at  least,  was  not  a  purely 
spontaneous  expression  of  the  conviction  that  man  is 
reconciled  with  the  powers  that  govern  his  life  and 
rule  the  universe,  but  in  great  measure  a  mere  orgiastic 
excitement.  The  nerves  were  strung  to  the  utmost 
tension  in  the  sombre  part  of  the  ceremony,  and  the 
natural  reaction  was  fed  by  the  physical  stimulus  of  the 
revelry  that  followed. 

1  Isa.  xxii.  12,  13,  compared  vvitli  i.  11  sqq. 


LKCT.   VII. 


RELIGION.  245 


This,  however,  is  not  a  picture  of  what  Semitic  religion 
was  from  the  first,  and  in  its  ordinary  exercises,  but  of  the 
shape  it  tended  to  assume  in  extraordinary  times  of  national 
calamity,  and  still  more  under  the  habitual  pressure  of 
grinding  despotism,  when  the  general  tone  of  social  life 
was  no  longer  bright  and  hopeful,  but  stood  in  painful 
contrast  to  the  joyous  temper  proper  to  the  traditional 
forms  of  worship.  Ancient  heathenism  was  not  made  for 
such  times,  but  for  seasons  of  national  prosperity,  when  its 
joyous  rites  were  the  appropriate  expression  for  the  happy 
fellowship  that  united  the  god  and  his  worshippers  to 
the  satisfaction  of  both  parties.  Then  the  enthusiasm  of 
the  worshipping  throng  was  genuine.  J\Ien  came  to  the 
sanctuary  to  give  free  vent  to  habitual  feelings  of  thankful 
confidence  in  their  god,  and  warmed  themselves  into  excite- 
ment in  a  perfectly  natural  way  by  feasting  together,  as 
people  still  do  when  they  rejoice  together. 

In  acts  of  worship  we  expect  to  find  the  religious  ideal 
expressed  in  its  purest  form,  and  we  cannot  easily  think 
well  of  a  type  of  religion  whose  ritual  culminates  in  a 
jovial  feast.  It  seems  that  such  a  faith  sought  nothing 
higher  than  a  condition  of  physical  lien  Hre,  and  in  one 
sense  this  judgment  is  just.  The  good  things  desired  of 
the  gods  were  the  blessings  of  earthly  life,  not  spiritual  but 
carnal  things.  But  Semitic  heathenism  was  redeemed 
from  mere  materialism  by  the  fact  that  religion  was  not 
the  affair  of  the  individual  but  of  the  community.  The 
ideal  was  earthly,  but  it  was  not  selfish.  In  rejoicing 
before  his  god  a  man  rejoiced  with  and  for  the  welfare 
of  his  kindred,  his  neighbours  and  his  country,  and,  in 
renewing  by  a  solemn  act  of  worship  the  bond  that  united 
him  to  his  god,  he  also  renewed  the  bonds  of  family  social 
and  national  obligation.  We  have  seen  that  the  compact 
between  the  god  and  the  community  of    his  worshippers 


246  THE    SOCIAL    ELEMENT  lect.  vil. 

was  not  held  to  pledge  the  deity  to  make  the  private  cares 
of  each  member  of  the  community  his  own.  The  gods  had 
their  favourites  no  doubt,  for  whom  they  were  prepared  to 
do  many  things  that  they  were  not  bound  to  do ;  but  no 
man  could  approach  his  god  in  a  purely  personal  matter 
with  that  spirit  of  absolute  confidence  which  I  have 
described  as  characteristic  of  antique  religions ;  it  was  the 
community,  and  not  the  individual,  that  was  sure  of  the 
permanent  and  unfailing  help  of  its  deity.  It  was  a 
national  not  a  personal  providence  that  was  taught  by 
ancient  religion.  So  much  was  this  the  case  that  in  purely 
personal  concerns  the  ancients  were  very  apt  to  turn,  not 
to  the  recognised  religion  of  the  family  or  of  the  state,  but 
to  magical  superstitions.  The  gods  watched  over  a  man's 
civic  life,  they  gave  him  his  share  in  public  benefits,  the 
annual  largess  of  the  harvest  and  the  vintage,  national 
l^eace  or  victory  over  enemies,  and  so  forth,  but  they  were 
not  sure  helpers  in  every  private  need,  and  above  all  they 
would  not  help  him  in  matters  that  were  against  the 
interests  of  the  community  as  a  whole.  There  was  there- 
fore a  whole  region  of  possible  needs  and  desires  for  which 
religion  could  and  would  know  nothing  ;  and  if  supernatural 
help  was  sought  in  such  things  it  had  to  be  sought  through 
magical  ceremonies,  designed  to  purchase  or  constrain  the 
favour  of  demoniac  powers  with  which  the  public  religion 
had  nothing  to  do.  Not  only  did  these  magical  supersti- 
tions lie  outside  religion,  but  in  all  well-ordered  states  they 
were  regarded  as  illicit.  A  man  had  no  right  to  enter  into 
private  relations  with  supernatural  powers  that  might  help 
him  at  the  expense  of  the  community  to  which  he 
belonged.  In  his  relations  to  the  unseen  he  was  bound 
always  to  think  and  act  with  and  for  the  community,  and 
not  for  himself  alone. 

With  this  it  accords  that  every  complete  act  of  worship 


LECT.   VII. 


IN    RELIGION.  247 


— for  a  mere  vow  was  not  a  complete  act  till  it  was 
fulfilled  by  presenting  a  sacrifice — had  a  public  or  quasi- 
public  character.  Most  sacrifices  were  offered  on  fixed 
occasions,  at  the  great  communal  or  national  feasts,  but 
even  a  private  offering  was  not  complete  without  guests, 
and  the  surplus  of  sacrificial  flesh  was  not  sold  but 
distributed  with  an  open  liand.^  Thus  every  act  of 
worship  expressed  the  idea  that  man  does  not  live 
for  himself  only  but  for  his  fellows,  and  that  this  partner- 
ship of  social  interests  is  the  sphere  over  which  the 
gods  preside  and  on  which  they  bestow  their  assured 
blessing. 

The  ethical  significance  which  thus  appertains  to  tlie 
sacrificial  meal,  viewed  as  a  social  act,  received  particular 
emphasis  from  certain  ancient  customs  and  ideas  connected 
with  eating  and  drinking.  According  to  antique  ideas 
those  who  eat  and  drink  together  are  by  this  very  act  tied 
to  one  another  by  a  bond  of  friendship  and  mutual 
obligation.  Hence  when  we  find  that  in  ancient  religions 
all  the  ordinary  functions  of  worship  are  summed  up  in 
the  sacrificial  meal,  and  that  the  ordinary  intercourse 
between  gods  and  men  has  no  other  form,  we  are  to 
remember  that  the  act  of  eating  and  drinking  together  is 
the  solemn  and  stated  expression  of  the  fact  that  all  those 
who  share  the  meal  are  brethren,  and  that  all  the  duties  of 
friendship  and  brotherhood  are  implicitly  acknowledged  in 
their  common  act.  By  admitting  man  to  his  table  the  god 
admits  him  to  his  friendship ;  but  this  favour  is  extended 
to  no  man  in  his  mere  private  capacity ;  he  is  received  as 
one  of  a  community,  to  eat  and  drink  along  with  his 
fellows,  and  in  tlie  same  measure  as  the  act  of  worship 
cements  the  bond  between  him  and  his  god,  it  cements  also 

^  See  above,  p.  236.     In  Greece,  in  later  times,  sacrificial  flesh  was  exjiosed 
for  sale  (1  Cor.  x.  25). 


248  ETHICAL   VALUE   OF  lect.  vii. 

the   bond  between  him  and  his    brethren  in  the  common 
faith. 

"VVe  have  now  reached  a  point  in  our  discussion  at 
wdiich  it  is  possible  to  form  some  general  estimate  of  the 
ethical  value  of  the  type  of  religion  which  has  been 
described.  The  power  of  religion  over  life  is  twofold, 
lying  partly  in  its  association  with  particular  precepts  of 
conduct,  to  which  it  supplies  a  supernatural  sanction,  but 
mainly  in  its  influence  on  the  general  tone  and  temper 
of  men's  minds,  which  it  elevates  to  higher  courai^e  and 
purpose,  and  raises  above  a  mere  brutal  servitude  to  the 
physical  wants  of  the  moment,  by  teaching  men  that  their 
lives  and  happiness  are  not  the  mere  sport  of  the  blind 
forces  of  nature,  but  are  watched  over  and  cared  for  by 
a  higher  power.  As  a  spring  of  action  this  influence  is 
more  potent  than  the  fear  of  supernatural  sanctions,  for 
it  is  stimulative,  while  the  other  is  only  regulative.  But 
to  produce  a  moral  effect  on  life  the  two  must  go  together ; 
a  man's  actions  must  be  not  only  supported  by  the  feeling 
that  the  divine  help  is  with  him,  but  regulated  by  the 
conviction  that  that  help  will  not  accompany  him  except 
on  the  right  path.  In  ancient  religion,  as  it  appears 
among  the  Semites,  the  confident  assurance  of  divine  help 
belongs,  not  to  each  man  in  his  private  concerns,  but  to 
the  community  in  its  jDublic  functions  and  public  aims  ;  and 
it  is  this  assurance  that  is  expressed  in  public  acts  of 
worship,  where  all  the  members  of  the  community  meet 
together  to  eat  and  drink  at  the  table  of  their  god,  and 
so  renew  the  sense  that  he  and  they  are  altogether  at  one. 
Now,  if  we  look  at  the  whole  community  of  worshippers 
as  absolutely  one,  personify  them  and  think  of  them  as  a 
single  individual,  it  is  plain  that  the  effect  of  this  type 
of  religion  must  be  regarded  as  merely  stimulative  and 
not   regulative.       When   the    community   is   at   one  with 


LECT.  vil.  SACRIFICIAL    RELIGION.  249 

itself  and  at  one  with  its  god,  it  may,  for  anything  that 
religion  has  to  say,  do  exactly  what  it  pleases  towards 
all  who  are  outside  it.  Its  friends  are  the  god's  friends, 
its  enemies  the  god's  enemies ;  it  takes  its  god  with  it  in 
whatever  it  chooses  to  do.  As  the  ancient  communities 
of  religion  are  tribes  or  nations,  this  is  as  nmch  as  to  say 
that,  properly  speaking,  ancient  religion  has  no  influence 
on  intertribal  or  international  morality — in  such  matters 
the  god  simply  goes  with  his  own  nation  or  his  own  tribe. 
So  lonfT  as  we  consider  the  tribe  or  nation  of  common 
religion  as  a  single  subject,  the  influence  of  religion  is 
limited  to  an  increase  of  the  national  self-confidence — a 
quahty  very  useful  in  the  continual  struggle  for  life  that 
was  waged  between  ancient  communities,  but  which  beyond 
this  has  no  moral  value. 

But  the  case  is  very  different  when  we  look  at  the 
religious  community  as  made  up  of  a  multitude  of 
individuals,  each  of  whom  has  private  as  well  as  public 
purposes  and  desires.  In  this  aspect  it  is  the  regulative 
influence  of  ancient  religion  that  is  predominant,  for  the 
good  things  which  religion  holds  forth  are  promised  to  the 
individual  only  in  so  far  as  he  lives  in  and  for  the  com- 
munity. The  conception  of  man's  chief  good  set  forth 
in  the  social  act  of  sacrificial  worship  is  the  happiness 
of  the  individual  in  the  happiness  of  the  community,  and 
thus  the  whole  force  of  ancient  religion  is  directed,  so  far 
as  the  individual  is  concerned,  to  maintain  the  civil  virtues 
of  loyalty  and  devotion  to  a  man's  fellows  at  a  pitch  of 
confident  enthusiasm,  to  teach  him  to  set  his  highest  good 
in  the  prosperity  of  the  society  of  which  he  is  a  member, 
not  doubting  that  in  so  doing  he  has  the  divine  power  on 
his  side  and  has  given  his  life  to  a  cause  that  cannot  fail. 
This  devotion  to  the  common  weal  was,  as  every  one  knows, 
the  mainspring  of  ancient  morality  and  the  source  of  all 


250  ANCIENT    MORALITY.  Lect.  vil. 

the  heroic  virtues  of  which  ancient  history  presents  so 
many  illustrious  examples.  In  ancient  society,  therefore, 
the  religious  ideal  expressed  in  the  act  of  social  worship 
and  the  ethical  ideal  which  governed  the  conduct  of  daily 
life  were  wholly  at  one,  and  all  morality — as  morality  was 
then  understood — was  consecrated  and  enforced  by  religious 
motives  and  sanctions. 

These  observations  are  fully  applicable  only  to  the 
typical  form  of  ancient  religion,  when  it  was  still  strictly 
tribal  or  national.  When  nationality  and  religion  began 
to  fall  apart,  certain  worships  assumed  a  character  more 
or  less  cosmopolitan.  Even  in  heathenism  therefore,  in 
its  more  advanced  forms,  the  gods,  or  at  least  certain  gods, 
are  in  some  measure  the  guardians  of  universal  morality, 
and  not  merely  of  communal  loyalty.  But  what  was  thus 
gained  in  comprehensiveness  was  lost  in  intensity  and 
strength  of  religious  feeling,  and  the  advance  towards 
ethical  universalism,  which  was  made  with  feeble  and 
uncertain  steps,  was  never  sufficient  to  make  up  for  the 
decline  of  the  old  heroic  virtues  that  were  fostered  by  the 
narrower  type  of  national  faith. 


LECTUEE  VIII. 

THE    ORIGINAL    SIGNIFICANCE    OF    ANIMAL    SACRIFICE, 

Enough  has  been  said  as  to  the  significance  of  the  sacri- 
ficial feast  as  we  find  it  among  ancient  nations  no  longer 
barbarous.  But  to  understand  the  matter  fully  we  must 
trace  it  back  to  its  origin  in  a  state  of  society  much 
more  primitive  than  that  of  the  agricultural  Semites  or 
Greeks. 

The  sacrificial  meal  was  an  appropriate  expression  of  the 
antique  ideal  of  religious  life,  not  merely  because  it  was  a 
social  act  and  an  act  in  which  the  god  and  his  worshippers 
were  conceived  as  partaking  together,  but  because,  as  has 
already  been   said,  the  very  act   of    eating   and   drinking 
with  a  man  was  a  symbol  and  a  confirmation  of  fellowship 
and    mutual    social   obligations.     The   one   thing   directly 
expressed  in  the  sacrificial  meal  is  that  the  god  and  his 
worshippers  are  commensals,  but  every  other  point  in  their 
mutual  relations  is  included  in  what  this  involves.     Those 
who  sit  at  meat  together  are  united  for  all  social  efTects, 
those  who  do  not  eat  together  are  aliens  to  one  another, 
without  fellowship  in  religion  and  without  reciprocal  social 
duties.     The  extent  to  which  this  view  prevailed  among 
the  ancient  Semites,  and  still  prevails  among  the  i\rabs, 
may  be  brought  out  most  clearly  by  reference  to  the  law  of 
hospitality.     Among  the  Arabs  every  stranger  whom  one 
meets  in  the  desert  is  a  natural  enemy,  and  has  no  protec- 
tion against  violence  except  his  own  strong  hand  or  the  fear 

201 


252  THE   BOND 


LECT.   VIII. 


that  his  tribe  will  avenge  him  if  his  blood  be  spilt.^  But 
if  I  have  eaten  the  smallest  morsel  of  food  with  a  man,  I 
have  nothing  further  to  fear  from  him ;  "  there  is  salt 
between  us,"  and  he  is  bound  not  only  to  do  me  no  harm, 
but  to  help  and  defend  me  as  if  I  were  his  brother.^  So 
far  was  this  principle  carried  by  the  old  Arabs,  that  Zaid 
al-Khail,  a  famous  w^arrior  in  the  days  of  Mohammed, 
refused  to  slay  a  vagabond  who  carried  off  his  camels, 
because  the  thief  had  surreptitiously  drunk  from  his  father's 
milk  bowl  before  committing  the  theft.^  It  does  not 
indeed  follow  as  a  matter  of  course  that  because  I  have 
eaten  once  with  a  man  I  am  permanently  his  friend,  for 
the  bond  of  union  is  conceived  in  a  very  realistic  way,  and 
strictly  speaking  lasts  no  longer  than  the  food  may  be 
supposed  to  remain  in  my  system.'*  But  the  temporary 
bond  is  confirmed  by  repetition,^  and  readily  passes  into  a 
permanent  tie  confirmed  by  an  oath.  "  There  was  a  sworn 
alliance  between  the  Libyan  and  the  Mostalic,  they  were 
wont  to  eat  and  drink  together."^  This  phrase  of  an  Arab 
narrator    supplies  exactly  what   is  wanted   to    define  the 

1  This  is  the  meaning  of  Gen.  iv.  14  sq.  Cain  is  "  driven  out  from  the 
face  of  the  cultivated  land "  into  the  desert,  where  his  only  protection  is 
the  law  of  blood  revenge. 

^  The  7nilha,  or  bond  of  salt,  is  not  dependent  on  the  actual  use  of  mineral 
salt  with  the  food  by  which  the  bond  is  constituted.  Milk,  for  example, 
will  serve  the  purpose.  Cf.  Burckhardt,  Bedouins  and  Wahabys,  i.  329,  and 
Kumil,  p.  284,  especially  the  verse  of  Abu  '1-Tamahan  there  cited,  where  salt 
is  interpreted  to  mean  "milk." 

'  A<jh.  xvi.  51  ;  cf.  Kinship,  p.  149  sq. 

*  Burton,  Pihjrimcuje,  iii.  84  (1st  ed. ),  says  that  some  tribes  "require  to 
rencAv  the  bond  every  twenty-four  hours,"  as  otherwise,  to  use  their  own 
phrase,  "  the  salt  is  not  in  their  stomachs"  (almost  the  same  phrase  is  used 
in  the  verse  of  Abu  '1-Tamaluui  referred  to  above).  J5ut  usually  the  protec- 
tion extended  to  a  guest  lasts  three  days  and  a  third  after  his  departure 
(Burckhardt,  op.  cit.  i.  136)  ;  or  according  to  Doughty,  i.  228,  two  nights 
and  the  day  between. 

*  "0  enemy  of  God,  wilt  thou  slay  this  Jew?  Much  of  the  fat  on  thy 
paunch  is  of  his  substance"  (Ibn  Hisham.'ii.  553  sq.). 

"  Diw.  Ilodh.  No.  87  (Koscgarteu's  ed.  p.  170). 


LECT.   VIII. 


OF   FOOD.  253 


significance  of  the  sacriticial  meal.  The  god  and  his 
worshippers  are  wont  to  eat  and  drink  together,  and  by 
this  token  their  fellowship  is  declared  and  sealed. 

The  ethical  significance   of  the   common   meal  can  be 
most  adequately  illustrated  from  Arabian  usage,  but  it  was 
not  confined  to  the  Arabs.     The   Old  Testament  records 
many  cases  where  a  covenant  was  sealed  by  the  parties 
eatincr  and  drinking  together.     In  most  of  these  indeed  the 
meal  is  sacrificial,  so  that  it  is  not  at  once  clear  that  two 
men  are  bound  to  each  other  merely  by  partaking  of  the 
same  dish,  unless  the  deity  is  taken  in  as  a  third  party  to 
the  covenant.     The  value  of  the  Arabian  evidence  is  that 
it  supplies  proof  that  the  bond  of  food  is  valid  of  itself, 
that  religion  may  be  called  in  to  confirm  and  strengthen  it, 
but  that  the  essence  of  the  thing  lies  in  the  physical  act  of 
eatincj  toiiether.     That  this  was  also  the  case  among  the 
Hebrews  and   Canaanites   may  be   safely  concluded   from 
analogy,  and  appears  to  receive  direct  confirmation  from 
Josh.  ix.  14,  where  the  Israelites  enter  into  alliance  with 
the  Gibeonites  by  taking  of  their  victuals,  without  consult- 
ing  Jehovah.      A    formal   league    confirmed   by  an   oath 
follows,  but  by  accepting  the  proffered  food  the  Israelites 
are  already  committed  to  the  alliance. 

But  we  have  not  yet  got  to  the  root  of  the  matter. 
What  is  the  ultimate  nature  of  the  fellowship  which  is 
constituted  or  declared  when  men  eat  and  drink  together  ? 
In  our  complicated  society  fellowship  has  many  types  and 
many  degrees ;  men  may  be  united  by  bonds  of  duty  and 
honour  for  certain  purposes,  and  stand  quite  apart  in  all 
other  things.  Even  in  ancient  times — for  example,  in  the 
Old  Testament — we  find  the  sacrament  of  a  common  meal 
introduced  to  seal  engagements  of  various  kinds.  But  in 
every  case  the  engagement  is  absolute  and  inviolable,  it 
constitutes  what  in  the  language  of  ethics  is  called  a  duty 


254  FOOD    AND  LECT.  VIII. 


of  perfect  obligation.  Now  in  the  most  primitive  society 
there  is  only  one  kind  of  fellowship  which  is  absolute  and 
inviolable.  To  the  primitive  man  all  other  men  fall  under 
two  classes,  those  to  whom  his  life  is  sacred  and  those  to 
whom  it  is  not  sacred.  The  former  are  his  fellows ;  the 
latter  are  strangers  and  potential  foemen,  with  whom  it  is 
absurd  to  think  of  forming  any  inviolable  tie  unless  they 
are  first  brought  into  the  circle  within  which  each  man's 
life  is  sacred  to  all  his  comrades. 

But  that  circle  again  corresponds  to  the  circle  of 
kinship,  for  the  practical  test  of  kinship  is  that  the 
whole  kin  is  answerable  for  the  life  of  each  of  its 
members.  By  the  rules  of  early  society,  if  I  slay  my 
kinsman,  whether  voluntarily  or  involuntarily,  the  act 
is  murder,  and  is  punished  by  expulsion  from  the  kin ;  ^ 
if  my  kinsman  is  slain  by  an  outsider  I  and  every  other 
member  of  my  kin  are  bound  to  avenge  his  death  by 
killing  the  manslayer  or  some  member  of  his  kin.  It 
is  obvious  that  under  such  a  system  there  can  be  no 
inviolable  fellowship  except  between  men  of  the  same 
blood.  For  the  duty  of  blood  revenge  is  paramount,  and 
every  other  obligation  is  dissolved  as  soon  as  it  comes  into 
conflict  with  the  claims  of  blood.  I  cannot  bind  myself 
absolutely  to  a  man,  even  for  a  temporary  purpose,  unless 
during  the  time  of  our  engagement  he  is  put  into  a 
kinsman's  place.  And  this  is  as  much  as  to  say  that  a 
stranger  cannot  become  bound  to  me,  unless  at  the  same 
time  he  becomes  bound  to  all  my  kinsmen  in  exactly  the 
same  way.  Such  is,  in  fact,  the  law  of  the  desert ;  when 
any  member  of  a  clan  receives  an  outsider  through  the 
bond  of  salt,  the  whole  clan  is  bound  by  his  act,  and  must, 

^  Even  in  Homeric  society  no  bloodwit  can  be  accepted  for  slaughter 
•within  the  kin;  a  point  wliich  is  commonly  overlooked,  e.g.  by  Buchholz, 
Horn.  Real.  II.  i.  76. 


LECT.   VIII.  KINSHIP.  255 

while  the  engagement  lasts,  receive  the  stranger  as  one  of 
themselves.^ 

The  idea  that  kinship  is  not  purely  an  affair  of  birth, 
but  may  be  acquired,  has  quite  fallen  out  of  our  circle 
of  ideas;  l)ut  so,  for  that  matter,  has  the  primitive  con- 
ception of  kindred  itself.  To  us  kinship  has  no  absolute 
value,  but  is  measured  by  degrees,  and  means  much  or 
little,  or  nothing  at  all,  according  to  its  degree  and  other 
circumstances.  In  ancient  times,  on  the  contrary,  the 
fundamental  obligations  of  kinship  had  nothing  to  do 
with  degrees  of  relationship,  but  rested  with  absolute 
and  identical  force  on  every  member  of  the  clan.  To 
know  that  a  man's  life  was  sacred  to  me,  and  that  every 
blood-feud  that  touched  him  involved  me  also,  it  was  not 
necessary  for  me  to  count  cousinship  with  him  by  reckon- 
ing up  to  our  common  ancestor ;  it  was  enough  that  we 
belonged  to  the  same  clan  and  bore  the  same  clan-name. 
What  was  my  clan  was  determined  by  customary  law, 
which  was  not  the  same  in  all  stages  of  society ;  in  the 
earliest  Semitic  communities  a  man  was  of  his  mother's 
clan,  in  later  times  he  belonged  to  the  clan  of  his  father. 
But  the  essential  idea  of  kinship  was  independent  of  tlie 
particular  form  of  the  law.  A  kin  was  a  group  of  persons 
whose  lives  were  so  bound  up  together,  in  what  must  be 
called  a  physical  unity,  that  they  could  be  treated  as  parts 
of  one  common  life.  The  members  of  one  kindred  looked 
on  themselves  as  one  living  whole,  a  single  animated  mass 
of  blood,  flesh  and  bones,  of  which  no  member  could  be 
touched  without  all  the  members  suffering.  This  point 
of    view  is    expressed    in    the    Semitic   tongues   in   many 

^  This  of  course  is  to  be  understood  only  of  the  fiindamontal  rights  and 
duties  whicli  turn  on  tlie  sanctity  of  kindred  blood.  The  secondary 
privileges  of  kinship,  in  matters  of  inheritance  and  the  like,  lie  outside  of 
the  present  argument,  and  with  regard  to  them  the  covenanted  ally  had  not 
the  full  rights  of  a  kinsman  (A'/rw/iyj,  p.  47). 


256  KINSHIP   AND  LECT.  VIII.' 

familiar  forms  of  speech.  In  a  case  of  homicide  Arabian 
tribesmen  do  not  say,  "  The  blood  of  M.  or  N.  has  been 
spilt,"  naming  the  man ;  they  say,  "  Our  blood  has  been 
spilt."  In  Hebrew  the  phrase  by  which  one  claims 
kinship  is  "  I  am  your  bone  and  your  flesh."  ^  Both  in 
Hebrew  and  in  Arabic  "  flesh  "  is  synonymous  with  "  clan  " 
or  kindred  group.^  To  us  all  this  seems  mere  metaphor, 
from  which  no  practical  consequences  can  follow.  But 
in  early  thought  there  is  no  sharp  line  between  the  meta- 
phorical and  the  literal,  between  the  way  of  expressing  a 
thing  and  the  way  of  conceiving  it ;  phrases  and  symbols 
are  treated  as  realities.  Now,  if  kinship  means  participa- 
tion in  a  common  mass  of  flesh  blood  and  bones,  it  is 
natural  that  it  should  be  regarded  as  dependent,  not 
merely  on  the  fact  that  a  man  was  born  of  his  mother's 
body,  and  so  was  from  his  birth  a  part  of  her  flesh,  but 
also  on  the  not  less  significant  fact  that  he  was  nourished 

^  Judg.  ix.  2;  2  Sam.  v.  1.  Conversely  in  acknowledging  kinship  the 
phrase  is  "Thou  art  my  bone  and  my  flesh  "  (Gen.  xxix.  14  ;  2  Sam,  xix.  12) ; 
cf.  Gen.  xxxvii.  27,  "our  brother  and  our  flesh." 

-  Lev.  XXV.  49  ;  Kinship,  p.  149.  In  this  book,  p.  39  sq.,  I  argued  that 
the  common  Arabian  name  for  a  kindred  group  [hayy)  probably  means 
"life,"  and  rests  on  the  idea  that  one  life  runs  through  the  veins  of  the 
•whole  group.  Prof.  De  Goeje,  however,  has  given  excellent  reasons  for 
rejecting  this  view  in  a  MS,  note  on  my  book,  which  I  will  here  quote  in 
his  own  words  : — "  You  say  very  justly  (p,  167)  of  the  tent  of  the  wife  : 
'This  tent  plays  quite  a  significant  part  both  in  marriage  and  in  divorce.' 
And  so  it  does  in  protection  (p.  42  sq.),  etc,  (p,  65  nqq.).  My  opinion  is 
that  hayy  is  originally  'tent,'  as  well  as  hiwa,  Heb,  Tl,  n*n  and  n^n.  It 
has  this  original  meaning  in  the  expression  sa'afu  'l-hayy,  '  the  paraphernalia 
of  the  bride,'  originally  the  palmsticks  wherewith  the  tent  was  constructed 
or  adorned.  AVe  find  the  word  too  in  this  signification  in  the  Berber 
language  {dh^,  e.g.  Earth,  Beisen,  v.  711).  The  word  hhou  preserved  the 
old  meaning.  One  says  shadda  (or  damma)  'alaihd  hiwuhti  [e.g.  Agh.  xx. 
7,  1.  8,  12)  for  ha7id  'alaihd,  showing  that  your  explanation  of  this  phrase 
(p.  167)  is  excellent.  Thus  wc  have  in  hayy  the  same  metaphor  as  in  bait, 
aid.  Perhaps  ahh  ['  brother  ']  has  been  differentiated  from  this  same  root. 
From  '  tent '  to  '  dwelling-place  of  the  family '  and  to  '  family  '  the  transition 
is  easy.  An  older  example  of  the  use  oUiayy  for  home  is  a  verse  of  Taiibbata 
Sharran,  TA.  iv.  367  ;  Hamusa,  383  uU." 


LECT.  viii.  COMMON    LIFE.  257 


by  her  milk.  And  so  we  find  that  among  the  Arabs  there 
is  a  tie  of  milk,  as  well  as  of  blood,  which  unites  the 
foster-child  to  his  foster-mother  and  her  kin.  Again, 
after  the  child  is  weaned,  his  flesh  and  blood  continue  to 
be  nourished  and  renewed  by  the  food  which  he  shares 
with  his  commensals,  so  that  commensality  can  be  thought 
of  (1)  as  confirming  or  even  (2)  as  constituting  kinship  in 
a  very  real  sense.  ^ 

As  regards  their  bearing  on  the  doctrine  of  sacrifice  it 
will  conduce  to  clearness   if   we    keep    these    two   points 
distinct.     Primarily  the  circle  of  common  religion  and  of 
common  social  duties   was   identical   with    that  of  natural 
kinship,^  and  the  god  himself  was  conceived  as  a  being  of 
the  same  stock   with   his  worshippers.       It  was   natural, 
therefore,  that  the  kinsmen  and  their  kindred  god  should 
seal  and  strengthen  their  fellowship  by  meeting  together 
from   time  to  time   to   nourish   their    common   life  by    a 
common  meal,   to   which   those   outside   the  kin   were  not 
admitted.     A  good  example  of  this  kind  of  clan  sacrifice, 
in  which  a  whole  kinship  periodically  joins,  is  afforded  by 
the    Iloman   sacra  gentilicia.     As  in  primitive  society  no 
man  can  belong  to  more  than  one  kindred,  so  among  the 
Romans  no  one  could  share  in  the  sacra  of  two  gentes — 
to  do  so  was  to  confound  the  ritual  and  contaminate  the 
purity  of  the  gens.      The  sacra  consisted  in  common  anni- 
versary sacrifices,   in    which   the  clansmen   honoured   the 
srods  of  the  clan  and  after  them  the  "  demons  "  of  their 
ancestors,   so   that   the   whole  kin   living   and   dead   were 
brouj^ht  together  in  the  service.^     That  the  earliest  sacri- 
ficial  feasts  among  the  Semites  were  of  the  nature  of  sacra 
gentilicia    is    matter    of    inference    rather    than   of   direct 

1  Cf.  Kinship,  p.  149  aqq.  "  Supra,  p.  .')!. 

^  For  proofs  and  further  details  see  the  evidence  collected  by  Alaniuardt, 
lio7n.  StaatsverwoUlwKj,  2ud  ed.  iii.  130  ^7. 

li 


258  GENTILE  LECT.  VIII. 

evidence,  but  is  not  on  that  account  less  certain.  For 
that  the  Semites  form  no  exception  to  the  general  rule 
that  the  circle  of  religion  and  of  kinship  were  originally 
identical,  has  been  shewn  in  Lecture  II.  The  only  thing, 
therefore,  for  which  additional  proof  is  needed  is  that  the 
sacrificial  ritual  of  the  Semites  already  existed  in  this 
primitive  form  of  society.  That  this  was  so  is  morally 
certain  on  "eneral  "rounds ;  for  an  institution  like  the 
sacrificial  meal,  which  occurs  with  the  same  general 
features  all  over  the  world,  and  is  found  among  the  most 
primitive  peoples,  must,  in  the  nature  of  things,  date 
from  the  earliest  stage  of  social  organisation.  And  the 
general  argument  is  confirmed  by  the  fact  that  after  several 
clans  had  begun  to  frequent  the  same  sanctuary  and 
worship  the  same  god,  the  worshippers  still  grouped  them- 
selves for  sacrificial  purposes  on  the  principle  of  kinship. 
In  the  days  of  Saul  and  David  all  the  tribes  of  Israel 
had  long  been  united  in  the  worship  of  Jehovah,  yet  the 
clans  still  maintained  their  annual  gentile  sacrifice,  at 
which  every  member  of  the  group  was  bound  to  be 
present.-^  But  evidence  more  decisive  comes  to  us  from 
Arabia,  where,  as  we  have  seen,  men  would  not  eat 
together  at  all  unless  they  were  united  by  kinship  or  by 
a  covenant  that  had  the  same  effect  as  natural  kinship. 
Under  such  a  rule  the  sacrificial  feast  must  have  been 
confined  to  kinsmen,  and   the  clan   was  the  largest  circle 

''  1  Sam.  XX.  6,  29.  Tlie  word  viishpaha,  wliicli  the  English  Bible  here 
and  elsewhere  renders  "faniilj^"  denotes  not  a  household  but  a  clan.  In 
verse  29  the  true  reading  is  indicated  by  the  Septuagint,  and  has  been  re- 
stored by  AVellhausen  CH^  V ''''V  ^r')-  It  was  not  David's  brother,  but 
his  brethren,  tliat  is  his  clansmen,  that  enjoined  his  presence.  The  annual 
festivity,  tlie  duty  of  all  clansmen  to  attend,  the  expectation  that  this 
sacred  duty  woukl  be  accepted  as  a  valid  excuse  for  absence  from  court 
even  at  the  king's  new-moon  sacrifice,  are  so  many  points  of  correspondence 
with  the  Roman  gentile  worship ;  cf.  Gelliiis,  xvi.  4.  3,  and  the  other 
passages  cited  by  iMari|uardt,  ul  avpra,  p.  132,  note  4. 


LECT.   VIII. 


SACRIFICE.  250 


that  could  unite  in  a  sacrificial  act.      And  so,  though  the 
great   sanctuaries   of  heathen   Arabia   were   frequented   at 
the  pilgrimage  feasts  by  men  of  different  tri])es,  who  met 
peaceably  for  a  season  under  the  protection  of  the  truce 
of  God,  we  find  that  their  participation  in  the  worship  of 
the  same  holy  place  did  not  bind  alien  clans  together  in 
any   religious  unity;   they   worshipped   side  by   side,   but 
not  together.      It  is  only  under  Islam  that  the  pilgrimage 
becomes   a   bond  of   religious   fellowship,  whereas   in   the 
times   of  heathenism   it   was  the   correct   usage   that   the 
different  tribes,  before  they  broke  up  from  the  feast,  should 
encrao-e  in  a  rivalry  of   self-exaltation  and  mutual  abuse, 
which  sent  them  home  with  all  their  old  jealousies  freshly 
inflamed.^ 

That  the  sacrificial  meal  was  originally  a  feast  of  kins- 
men, is  apt  to  suggest  to  modern  minds  the  idea  that  its 
primitive  type  is  to  be  sought  in  the  household  circle,  and 
that  public  sacrifices,  in  which  the  whole  clan  united,  are 
merely  an  extension  of  such  an  act  of  domestic  worship 
as  in  ancient  Eome  accompanied  every  family  meal.  The 
Roman  family  never  rose  from  supper  till  a  portion  of  food 
had  been  laid  on  the  burning  hearth  as  an  offering  to  the 
Lares,  and  the  current  opinion,  which  regards  the  gens  as 
nothing  more  than  an  enlarged  household,  naturally  regards 

1  See  Goldziher,  Muh.  Stml.  i.  56.  The  prayer  and  exhortation  of  Ww 
leader  of  the  procession  of  tribes  from  'Arafa  {Ayh.  iii.  4  ;  "Wellh.,  p.  191) 
seems  to  me  to  be  meant  for  his  own  tribe  alone.  The  prayer  for  "peace 
anion;:;  our  women,  a  continuous  range  of  pasture  occupied  by  our  lierdsmen, 
wealth  placed  in  the  hands  of  our  most  generous  men,"  asks  only  blessings 
for  the  tribe.  And  the  admonition  to  observe  treaties,  honour  clients,  and 
be  hospitable  to  guests  contains  nothing  that  was  not  a  point  of  tribal 
morality.  The  ijdza,  or  right  to  give  the  signal  for  dissolving  the  worship- 
ping assemldy,  belonged  to  a  particular  tribe  ;  it  was  the  right  to  start  first. 
The  man  who  gave  the  sign  to  this  tribe  closed  the  service  for  them  by  a 
prayer  and  admonition.  This  is  all  that  I  can  gather  from  the  passage,  and 
it  does  not  prove  that  the  tribes  had  any  other  religious  communion  than 
was  involved  in  their  being  in  one  place  at  one  time. 


260  GENTILE 


LECT.   VIII. 


the  gentile  sacrifice  as  an  enlargement  of  this  domestic 
rite.  But  the  notion  that  the  clan  is  only  a  larger  house- 
hold is  not  consistent  with  the  results  of  modern  research. 
Kinship  is  an  older  thing  than  family  life,  and  in  the 
most  primitive  societies  known  to  us  the  family  or  house- 
hold group  was  not  a  subdivision  of  the  clan,  but  contained 
members  of  more  than  one  kindred.  As  a  rule  the  savage 
man  may  not  marry  a  clanswoman,  and  the  children  are 
of  the  mother's  kin,  and  therefore  have  no  communion  of 
blood  religion  with  their  father.  In  such  a  society  there 
is  hardly  any  family  life,  and  there  can  be  no  sacred 
household  meal.  Before  the  family  meal  can  acquire  the 
religious  significance  that  it  possessed  in  Eome,  one  of  two 
things  must  take  place :  either  the  primitive  association 
of  religion  with  kinship  must  be  dissolved,  or  means  must 
have  been  found  to  make  the  whole  household  of  one 
blood,  as  was  done  in  Eome  by  the  rule  that  the  wife 
upon  her  marriage  was  adopted  into  her  husband's  gens.^ 
The  rudest  nations  have  religious  rules  about  food,  based 
on  the  principle  of  kinship,  viz.  that  a  man  may  not  eat  the 
totem  animal  of  his  clan ;  and  they  generally  have  some 
rites  of  the  nature  of  the  sacrificial  feast  of  kinsmen ;  but 
it  is  not  the  custom  of  savages  to  take  their  ordinary 
daily  food  in  a  social  way,  in  regular  domestic  meals. 
Their  habit  is  to  eat  irregularly  and  apart,  and  this  habit 
is  strengthened  by  the  religious  rules,  which  often  forbid 
to  one  member  of  a  household  the  food  which  is  permitted 
to  another. 

We  have  no  direct  evidence  as  to  the  rules  and  habits 
of  the  Semites  in  the  state  of  primitive  savagery,  though 

^  In  Greece,  according  to  the  testimony  of  Theophrastus,  op.  Porpli. ,  De 
Ahst.  ii.  20  (Bernays,  p.  C8),  it  was  customary  to  pay  to  the  gods  an  aparche 
of  every  meal.  The  term  a.-xa^x.^ffiai  seems  to  place  this  ofifering  under  the 
head  of  gifts  rather  than  of  sacrificial  communion,  and  the  gods  to  whom  the 
0 tiering  was  made  were  not,  as  at  Rome,  family  gods. 


LECT.  VIII.  SACRIFICE.  20 1 

there  is  ample  proof  of  an  indirect  kind  that  they  originally 
reckoned  kinship  through  the  mother,  and  that  men  often, 
if  not  always,  took  their  wives  from  strange  kins.  It  is 
to  be  presumed  that  at  this  stage  of  society  the  Semite  did 
not  eat  with  his  wife  and  children,  and  it  is  certain  that  if 
he  did  so  the  meal  could  not  have  had  a  religious  character, 
as  an  acknowledgment  and  seal  of  kinship  and  adlierence 
to  a  kindred  god.  But  in  fact  the  family  meal  never 
became  a  fixed  institution  among  the  Semites  generally. 
In  Egypt,  down  to  the  present  day,  many  persons  hardly 
ever  eat  with  their  wives  and  children,^  and  among  the 
Arabs,  boys  who  are  not  of  full  age  do  not  presume  to  eat 
in  the  presence  of  their  parents,  but  take  their  meals 
separately  or  with  the  women  of  the  house.^  No  doubt 
the  seclusion  of  women  has  retarded  the  development 
of  family  life  in  ]\Iohammedan  countries  ;  but  for  most 
purposes  this  seclusion  has  never  taken  much  hold  on  the 
desert,  and  yet  in  northern  Arabia  no  woman  will  eat 
before  men.^  I  apprehend  that  these  customs  were 
originally  formed  at  a  time  when  a  man  and  his  wife  and 
family  were  not  usually  of  one  kin,  and  when  only  kinsmen 
would  eat  together.*  But  be  this  as  it  may,  the  fact 
remains  that  in  Arabia  the  daily  family  meal  has  never 

^  Lane,  Mod.  Efjyptians,  5tli  ed.  i.  179  ;  cf.  Arabian  Xijhts,  chap.  ii. 
note  17. 

-  Burckhardt,  Bed.  and  Wah.  i.  355  ;  Doughty,  ii.  142. 

'  Burckhardt,  oj*.  cit.  i.  349.  Conversely  Ibn  Mojawir,  ap.  Sprenger, 
Postrouten,  p.  151,  tells  of  southern  Arabs  who  would  rather  die  thau  accept 
food  at  the  hand  of  a  woman. 

*  In  Arabia,  even  in  historical  times,  the  wife  was  not  adopted  into  her 
liusband's  kin.  The  children  in  historical  times  were  generally  reckoned  to 
the  father's  stock  ;  but  there  is  much  reason  to  think  that  this  new  rule  of 
kinship,  when  it  first  came  in,  did  not  mean  that  the  infant  was  born  into 
liis  fatiier's  clan,  but  that  he  was  adopted  into  it  by  a  formal  act,  whicli  did 
not  always  take  place  in  infancy.  We  find  that  young  children  follow  their 
mother  [Kinshij),  p.  114),  and  that  the  law  of  blood  revenge  did  not  prevent 
fathers  from  killing  their  youDg  daughters  {ibid.  p.  279  sqq.).  Of  this 
more  hereafter. 


262  GENTILE 


LECT.   VIII. 


been  an  established  institution  with  such  a  religious 
significance  as  attaches  to  the  Roman  supper.^ 

The  sacrificial  feast,  therefore,  cannot  be  traced  back  to 
the  domestic  meal,  but  must  be  considered  as  having  been 
from  the  first  a  public  feast  of  clansmen.  That  this  is 
true  not  only  for  Arabia  but  for  the  Semites  as  a  whole 
might  be  inferred  on  general  grounds,  inasmuch  as  all 
Semitic  worship  manifestly  springs  from  a  common  origin, 
and  the  inference  is  confirmed  by  the  observation  that 
even  among  the  agricultural  Semites  there  is  no  trace  of  a 
sacrificial  character  being  attached  to  ordinary  household 
meals.  The  domestic  hearth  among  the  Semites  was  not 
an  altar  as  it  was  at  Eome.^ 

Almost  all  varieties  of  human  food  were  offered  to  the 
gods,  and  any  kind  of  food  suffices,  according  to  the  laws 
of  Arabian  hospitality,  to  establish  that  bond  between  two 
men  which  in  the  last  resort  rests  on  the  principle  that 
only  kinsmen  eat  together.  It  may  seem,  therefore,  that 
in  the  abstract  any  sort  of  meal  publicly  partaken  of  by  a 
company  of  kinsmen  may  constitute  a  sacrificial  feast. 
The  distinction  between  the  feast  and  an  ordinary  meal 
lies,  it  may  seem,  not  in  the  material  or  the  copiousness  of 
the  repast,  but  in  its  public  character.  When  men  eat 
alone  they  do  not  invite  the  god  to  share  their  food,  but 
when  the  clan  eats  together  as  a  kindred  unity  the  kindred 
god  must  also  be  of  the  party. 

Practically,  however,  there  is  no  sacrificial  feast  according 
to  Semitic  usage  except  where  a  victim  is  slaughtered. 
The  rule  of  the  Levitical  law,  that  a  cereal  oblation,  when 

^  The  naming  of  God,  by  which  every  meal  is  consecrated  according  to 
Mohammed's  precejjt,  seems  in  ancient  times  to  have  been  practised  only 
when  a  victim  was  slaughtered ;  cf.  Wellh.,  p.  114.  Here  the  tahlil 
corresponds  to  the  blessing  of  the  sacrifice,  1  Sam.  ix.  13. 

^  The  passover  became  a  sort  of  household  sacrifice  after  the  exile,  but  was 
not  so  originally.     See  Wellhauseu,  Proleijoinena,  ch.  iii. 


LKCT.  VIII.  SACRIFICE.  263 


offered   alone,  belongs    wholly  to    the    god   and    gives  no 
occasion  for  a  feast  of  the  worshi})pers,  agrees   with  tin; 
older  history,  in  which  we  never  find  a  sacrificial  meal  of 
which  flesh  does  not  form   part.      Among  the  Arabs  the 
usage  is  the  same ;  a  religious   banquet   im])lies  a  victim. 
It  appears,  therefore,  to  look  at  the  matter  from  its  merely 
human  side,  that  the  slaughter  of  a  victim  must  have  been 
in  early  times  the  only  thing  that  brought  the  clan  together 
for  a  stated  meal.      Conversely,  every  slaughter  was  a  clan 
sacrifice,  that  is,  a  domestic  animal  was  not  slain  except  to 
procure  the  material  for  a  public  meal  of  kinsmen.      This 
last  proposition  seems  startling,  but  it  is  confirmed  by  the 
direct  evidence  of  Nilus  as  to  the  habits  of  the  Arabs  of 
the  Sinaitic  desert  towards  the  close  of  the  fourth  Christian 
century.     The  ordinary  sustenance  of  these  Saracens  was 
derived  from  pillage  or  from  hunting,  to  wliicli,  no  doubt, 
must  be  added,  as  a  main  element,  the  milk  of  their  herds. 
When  these  supplies   failed    they  fell    back   on  the  flesli 
of   their   camels,   one    of   which   was   slain  for    each  clan 
(avjyeveta)    or    for   each    group   which    habitually  pitched 
their  tents  together  (avaKrjvia) — which  according  to  known 
Arab  usage  would  always  be  a  fraction  of  a  clan  ^ — and 
the  flesh  was  hastily  devoured  by  the  kinsmen  in  dog-like 
fashion,  half  raw  and  merely  softened  over  the  fire. 

To  grasp  the  force  of  this  evidence  we  must  remember 
that,  beyond  question,  there  was  at  this  time  among  the 
Saracens  private  property  in  camels,  and  that  tlierefore,  so 
far  as  the  law  of  property  went,  there  could  be  no  reason 
why  a  man  should  not  kill  a  beast  for  the  use  of  his  own 
family.  And  though  a  whole  camel  might  be  too  much 
for  a  single  household  to  eat  fresh,  the  Arabs  knew  and 

^  Nili  opera  qumlain  nondum  edita  (Paris,  1639),  p.  27.  The  (ruyy'i*iia. 
answers  to  the  Arabic  bain,  the  rvffKnvia  to  the  Arabic  l^ayy,  in  the  sense  of 
encampment. 


264  SARACEN 


LECT.  VII r. 


practised  the  art  of  preserving  flesh  by  cutting  it  into  strips 
and  drying  them  in  the  sun.  Under  these  circumstances 
private  slaughter  could  not  have  failed  to  be  customary, 
unless  it  was  absolutely  forbidden  by  tribal  usage.  In 
short,  it  appears  that  while  milk,  game,  the  fruits  of  pillage 
were  private  food  which  might  be  eaten  in  any  way,  the 
camel  was  not  allowed  to  be  killed  and  eaten  except  in  a 
public  rite,  at  which  all  the  kinsmen  assisted. 

This  evidence  is  all  the  more  remarkable  because,  among 
the  Saracens  of  whom  Nilus  speaks,  the  slaughter  of  a 
camel  in  times  of  hunger  does  not  seem  to  have  been  con- 
sidered as  a  sacrifice  to  the  gods.  For  a  couple  of  pages 
later  he  speaks  expressly  of  the  sacrifices  which  these 
Arabs  offered  to  the  morning  star,  the  sole  deity  that  they 
acknowledged.  These  could  be  performed  only  when  the 
star  was  visible,  and  the  whole  victim — flesh,  skin  and 
bones — had  to  be  devoured  before  the  sun  rose  upon  it,  and 
the  day-star  disappeared.  As  this  form  of  sacrifice  was 
necessarily  confined  to  seasons  when  the  planet  Venus  was 
a  morning  star,  wlnle  the  necessity  for  slaughtering  a 
camel  as  food  might  arise  at  any  season,  it  is  to  be  inferred 
that  in  the  latter  case  the  victim  was  not  recognised  as 
having  a  sacrificial  character.  The  Saracens,  in  fact,  had 
outlived  the  stage  in  which  no  necessity  can  justify 
slaughter  that  is  not  sacrificial.  The  principle  that  the 
god  claims  his  share  in  every  slaughter  has  its  origin  in  the 
religion  of  kinship,  and  dates  from  a  time  when  the  tribal 
god  was  himself  a  member  of  the  tribal  stock,  and  when 
therefore  his  participation  in  the  sacrificial  feast  is  only 
one  aspect  of  the  rule  that  no  kinsman  must  be  excluded 
from  a  share  in  the  victim.  But  the  Saracens  of  Nilus, 
like  the  Arabs  generally  in  the  last  ages  of  heathenism, 
had  ceased  to  do  sacrifice  to  the  tribal  or  clan  gods  with 
whose  worship  the  feast  of  kinsmen  was  originally  con- 


LKCT.  viu.  SACRIFICE. 


265 


nected.       The  planet  Venus,  or  Lucifer,  was  not  a  tribal 
deity,  but,  as  we   know  from   a  variety   of   sources,  was 
worshipped   by  all   the   northern   Arabs,  to  whatever  kin 
they  belonged.      It  is  not  therefore  surprising  that  in  case 
of  necessity  we  should  meet  with  a  slaughter  in  which  tlie 
non-tribal  deity  had  no  part ;    but  it  is  noteworthy  that, 
after  the  victim  had  lost  its   sacrificial  character,  it  was 
still  deemed  necessary  that  the    slaughter  should   be  the 
affair    of    the   whole   kindred.      That   this   was  so,  while 
amonc:  the  Hebrews,  on  the  other  hand,  the  rule  that  all 
legitimate  slaughter  is  sacrifice  survived  long  after  house- 
holders were  permitted  to  make  private  sacrifices  on  their 
own  account,  is  characteristic  of  the  peculiar  development 
of    Arabia,    where,  as    Wellhausen    has    justly   remarked, 
religious  feeling  was  quite  put  in  the  shade  by  the  feeling 
for  the  sanctity  of  kindred  blood.     Elsewhere  among  the 
Semites  we  see  the  old  religion  surviving  the  tribal  system 
on  which  it  was  based,  and  accommodating  itself  to  the 
new  forms  of  national  life  ;    but  in  Arabia  the  rules  and 
customs    of    the    kin    retained    the    sanctity    which    they 
originally  derived  from  their  connection  with  the  religion 
of  the  kin,  long  after  the  kindred  god  had  been  forgotten 
or  had  sunk  into  quite  a  subordinate  place.       I  take  it, 
however,  that  the  eating  of  camels'  tiesh  continued  to  be 
regarded  by  the  Arabs  as  in  some  sense  a  religious  act, 
even  when  it  was  no  longer  associated  with  a  formal  act  of 
sacrifice ;  for  abstinence  from  the  flesh  of  camels  and  wild 
asses  was  prescribed  by  Symeon  Stylites  to    his   Saracen 
converts,^  and  traces  of  an  idolatrous  significance  in  feasts 
of  camels'  flesh  appear  in  Mohammedan  tradition. 

The  persistence  among  the  Arabs  of  the  scruple  against 
private  slaughter  for  a  man's  own  personal  use  may,  I 
think,  be  traced  in  a  modified  form  in  other  parts  of  Arabia 
1  Thcodoret,  eJ.  Nosselt,  iii.  1274  «7.        ^  -Wcllli.,  p.  Ill  ;  Kinship,  p.  202. 


2G6  GENTILE  LECT.  VIII. 

and  long  after  the  time  of  Xiliis.  Even  in  modern  times, 
when  a  sheep  or  camel  is  slain  in  honour  of  a  guest,  the 
good  old  custom  is  that  the  host  keeps  open  house  for  his 
neighbours,  or  at  least  distributes  portions  of  the  flesh  as 
far  as  it  will  go.  To  do  otherwise  is  still  deemed  churlish, 
though  not  illegal,  and  the  old  Arabic  literature  leaves  the 
impression  that  in  ancient  times  tliis  feeling  was  still 
stronger  than  it  is  now,  and  that  the  whole  encampment 
was  considered  when  a  beast  was  slain  for  food.^  But  be 
this  as  it  may,  it  is  highly  significant  to  find  that,  even  in 
one  branch  of  the  Arabian  race,  the  doctrine  that  hunger 
itself  does  not  justify  slaughter,  except  as  the  act  of  the 
clan,  was  so  deeply  rooted  as  to  survive  the  doctrine  that 
all  slaughter  is  sacrifice.  This  fact  is  sufficient  to  remove 
the  last  doubt  as  to  the  proposition  that  all  sacrifice  was 
originally  clan  sacrifice,  and  at  the  same  time  it  puts  the 
slaughter  of  a  victim  in  a  new  light,  by  classing  it  among 
the  acts  which,  in  primitive  society,  are  illegal  to  an 
individual,  and  can  only  be  justified  when  the  whole  clan 
shares  the  responsibility  of  the  deed.  So  far  as  I  know, 
there  is  only  one  class  of  actions  recognised  by  early  nations 
to  which  this  description  applies,  viz.  actions  which  involve 
an  invasion  of  the  sanctity  of  the  tribal  blood.  In  fact,  a 
life  which  no  single  tribesman  is  allowed  to  invade,  and 
which  can  be  sacrificed  only  by  the  consent  and  common 
action  of  the  kin,  stands  on  the  same  footing  with  the  life 
of  the  fellow-tribesman,     Neither  may  be  taken  away  by 

^  Compare  especially  the  story  of  Mawia's  courtship  {Aghdnl,  xvi.  104  ; 
Caussin  de  Perceval,  ii.  (513).  The  beggar's  claim  to  a  share  in  the  feast  is 
doubtless  ultimately  based  on  religious  and  tribal  usage  rather  than  on 
jiersonal  generosity.  Cf.  Deut.  xxvi.  13.  Similarly  among  the  Zulus, 
"  when  a  man  kills  a  cow — which,  however,  is  seldom  and  reluctantly  done, 
unless  it  happens  to  be  stolen  property — the  whole  population  of  the  hamlet 
assemble  to  eat  it  without  invitation  ;  and  people  living  at  a  distance  of  ten 
miles  will  also  come  to  jtartake  of  the  least"  (Shaw,  Memoriah  of  South 
Africa,  p.  59). 


LF.CT.    VIII. 


SACRIFICE.  207 


private  violence,  but  only  by  the  consent  of  the  kindred 
and  tlie  kindred  god.  And  the  parallelism  between  the 
two  cases  is  curiously  marked  in  detail  by  what  I  may  call 
a  similarity  between  the  ritual  of  sacrifice  and  of  the  execu- 
tion of  a  tribesman.  In  both  cases  it  is  required  that,  as 
far  as  possible,  every  member  of  the  kindred  should  be  not 
only  a  consenting  party  but  a  partaker  in  the  act,  so  that 
whatever  responsibility  it  involves  may  be  equally  dis- 
tributed over  tlie  whole  clan.  This  is  the  meaning  of  the 
ancient  Hebrew  form  of  execution,  where  the  culprit  is 
stoned  by  the  whole  congregation. 

The  idea  that  the  life  of  a  brute  animal  may  be  pro- 
tected by  the  same  kind  of  religious  scruple  as  the  life  of 
a  fellow-man  is  one  which  we  have  a  difficulty  in  grasping, 
or  which  at  any  rate  we  are  apt  to  regard  as  more  proper 
to  a  late  and  sentimental  age  than  to  the  rude  life  of 
primitive  times.  But  this  difficulty  mainly  comes  from 
our  taking  up  a  false  point  of  \\e\v.  Early  man  had 
certainly  no  conception  of  the  sacredness  of  animal  life 
as  such,  but  neither  had  he  any  conception  of  the  sacred- 
ness of  human  life  as  such.  The  life  of  his  clansman  was 
sacred  to  him,  not  because  he  was  a  man,  but  because  he 
was  a  kinsman ;  and,  in  like  manner,  the  life  of  an  animal 
of  his  totem  kind  is  sacred  to  the  savage,  not  because  it 
is  animate,  but  because  he  and  it  are  sprung  from  the  same 
stock  and  are  cousins  to  one  another. 

It  is  clear  that  the  scruple  of  Nilus's  Saracens  about 
killing  the  camel  was  of  this  restricted  kind ;  for  they  had 
no  objection  to  kill  and  eat  game.  But  the  camel  they 
would  not  kill  except  under  the  same  circumstances  as 
make  it  lawful  for  many  savages  to  kill  their  totem,  i.e. 
under  the  pressure  of  hunger  or  in  connection  with 
exceptional  religious  rites.^     The  parallelism  between  the 

^  Frazer,  Tolemism,  pp.  1 9,  48. 


2G8  PROHIBITION    OF  lect.  viii. 

Arabian  custom  and  totemism  is  therefore  complete  except 
in  one  point.  There  is  no  direct  evidence  that  the  scruple 
against  the  private  slaughter  of  a  camel  was  due  to  feelings 
of  kinship.  But,  as  we  have  seen,  there  is  this  indirect 
evidence,  that  the  consent  and  participation  of  the  clan, 
which  was  required  to  make  the  slaughter  of  a  camel 
legitimate,  is  the  very  thing  that  is  needed  to  make  the 
death  of  a  kinsman  leuitimate. 

The  presumption  thus  created  that  the  regard  paid  by 
the  Saracens  for  the  life  of  the  camel  turned  on  the  same 
principle  of  kinship  between  men  and  certain  kinds  of 
animals  which  is  the  prime  factor  in  totemism,  would  not 
be  worth  much  if  it  rested  only  on  an  isolated  statement 
about  a  particular  branch  of  the  Arab  race.  But  it  is 
to  be  observed  that  the  same  kind  of  restriction  on  the 
private  slaughter  of  animals  must  have  existed  in  ancient 
times  among  all  the  Semites.  We  have  found  reason  to 
believe  that  among  the  early  Semites  generally  no  slaughter 
was  legitimate  except  for  sacrifice,  and  we  have  also  found 
reason,  apart  from  Nilus's  evidence,  for  believing  that  all 
Semitic  sacrifice  was  originally  the  act  of  the  community. 
If  these  two  propositions  are  true,  it  follows  that  all  the 
Semites  at  one  time  protected  the  lives  of  animals  proper 
for  sacrifice,  and  forbade  them  to  be  slain  except  by  the 
act  of  the  clan,  that  is,  except  under  such  circumstances 
as  would  justify  or  excuse  the  death  of  a  kinsman.  Now, 
if  it  thus  appears  that  the  scruple  against  private  slaughter 
of  an  animal  proper  for  sacrifice  was  no  mere  individual 
peculiarity  of  Nilus's  Saracens,  but  must  at  an  early  period 
have  extended  to  all  the  Semites,  it  is  obvious  that  the 
conjecture  which  connects  the  scruple  with  a  feeling  of 
kinship  between  the  worshippers  and  the  victim  gains 
greatly  in  plausibility.  For  the  origin  of  the  scruple 
must  now  be  sought  in  some  widespread  and  very  primi- 


LECT.  VIII.  PRIVATE   SLAUGHTER.  2G9 

tive  habit  of  thought,  and  it  is  therefore  apposite  to  point 
out  that  among  primitive  peoples  there  are  no  binding 
precepts  of  conduct  except  those  that  rest  on  the  principle 
of  kinship.^  This  is  the  general  rule  which  is  found  iu 
operation  wherever  we  have  an  opportunity  of  observing 
rude  societies,  and  that  it  prevailed  among  the  early 
Semites  is  not  to  be  doubted.  Indeed  among  the  Arabs 
the  rule  held  good  without  substantial  modification  down 
to  the  time  of  Mohammed.  No  life  and  no  obligation 
was  sacred  unless  it  was  brought  within  the  charmed 
circle  of  the  kindred  blood. 

Thus  the  prima  facie  presumption,  tliat  the  scruple  in 
question  had  to  do  with  the  notion  that  certain  animals 
were  akin  to  men,  becomes  very  strong  indeed,  and  can 
hardly  be  set  aside  unless  those  who  reject  it  are  prepared 
to  show  that  the  idea  of  kinship  between  men  and  beasts, 
as  it  is  found  in  most  primitive  nations,  was  altogether 
foreign  to  Semitic  thought,  or  at  least  had  no  substantial 
place  in  the  ancient  religious  ideas  of  that  race.  But  I 
do  not  propose  to  throw  the  burden  of  proof  on  the 
antagonist. 

I  have  already  had  occasion  in  another  connection  to 
shew  by  a  variety  of  evidences  that  the  earliest  Semites, 
like  primitive  men  of  other  races,  drew  no  sharp  line  of 
distinction  between  the  nature  of  gods,  of  men,  and  of 
beasts,  and  had  no  difficulty  in  admitting  a  real  kinship 
between  (a)  gods  and  men,  (h)  gods  and  sacred  animals, 
(c)  families  of  men  and  families  of  beasts.^  As  regards 
the  third  of  these  points,  the  direct  evidence  is  fragmen- 
tary and  sporadic ;  it  is  sufficient  to  prove  that  the  idea  of 


^  In  religions  based  on  kinsliip,  where  the  god  and  his  worshijipers  are 
of  6ne  stock,  precepts  of  sanctity  are,  of  course,  covered  by  the  principle 
of  kinship 

*  Supra,  pp.  42  sqq.,  84  sqq. 


270  THE    VICTIM    A 


LECT.   VIII. 


kinship  between  races  of  men  and  races  of  beasts  was  not 
foreign  to  the  Semites,  but  it  is  not  sufficient  to  prove 
that  such  a  belief  was  widely  prevalent,  and  had  pro- 
minence enough  to  justify  us  in  taking  it  as  one  of  the 
fundamental  principles  on  which  Semitic  ritual  was 
founded.  But  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  three 
points  are  so  connected  that  if  any  two  of  them  are 
established,  the  third  necessarily  follows.  Now,  as  regards 
(a),  it  is  not  disputed  that  the  kinship  of  gods  with  their 
worshippers  is  a  fundamental  doctrine  of  Semitic  religion  ; 
it  appears  so  widely  and  in  so  many  forms  and  applica- 
tions, that  we  cannot  look  upon  it  otherwise  than  as  one 
of  the  first  and  most  universal  principles  of  ancient  faith. 
Again,  as  regards  (b),  a  belief  in  sacred  animals,  which 
are  treated  with  the  reverence  due  to  divine  beings,  is  an 
essential  element  in  the  most  widespread  and  important 
Semitic  cults.  All  the  great  deities  of  the  northern 
Semites  had  their  sacred  animals,  and  were  themselves 
worshipped  in  animal  form,  or  in  association  with  animal 
symbols,  down  to  a  late  date ;  and  that  this  association 
implied  a  veritable  unity  of  kind  between  animals  and 
gods  is  placed  beyond  doubt,  on  the  one  hand,  by  the 
fact  that  the  sacred  animals,  c.f/.  the  doves  and  fish  of 
Atargatis,  were  reverenced  with  divine  honours  ;  and,  on 
the  other  hand,  by  theogonic  myths,  such  as  that  which 
makes  the  dove-goddess  be  born  from  an  egg,  and  trans- 
formation myths,  such  as  that  of  Bambyce,  where  it  was 
believed  that  the  fish -goddess  and  her  son  had  actually 
been  transformed  into  fish.^ 

'  Examples  of  the  evidence  on  this  head  liave  lieen  given  above  ;  a  fuller 
aceount  of  it  will  fall  to  be  given  in  a  future  course  of  lectures.  Meantime 
the  reader  may  refer  to  Kiniihip,  chap.  vii.  I  may  here,  however,  add  a 
general  argument  which  seems  to  deserve  attention.  We  have  seen  {supra, 
p.  134  .S177. )  that  holiness  is  not  based  on  the  idea  of  property.  Holy  animals, 
and  holy  things  generally,  are  primarily  conceived,  not  as  belonging  to  the 


LECT.  VIII.  SACRED    ANIMAL.  271 

Now  if  it  thus  appears  that  kinship  between  the  gods 
and  their  worshippers,  on  the  one  hand,  and  kinshi[) 
between  the  gods  and  certain  kinds  of  animals,  on  the 
other,  are  deep  -  seated  principles  of  Semitic  religion, 
manifesting  themselves  in  all  parts  of  tlie  sacred  institu- 
tions of  the  race,  we  must  necessarily  conclude  that 
kinship  between  families  of  men  and  animal  kinds  was  an 
idea  equally  deep-seated,  and  we  shall  expect  to  find  that 
sacred  animals,  wherever  they  occur,  will  be  treated  with 
the  regard  which  men  pay  to  their  kinsfolk. 

Indeed  in  a  religion  based  on  kinship,  where  the  god 
and  his  worshippers  are  of  one  stock,  the  principle  of 
sanctity  and  that  of  kinship  are  identical.  The  sanctity 
of  a  kinsman's  life  and  the  sanctity  of  the  godhead  are  not 
two  things,  but  one ;  for  ultimately  the  only  thing  that 
is  sacred  is  the  common  tribal  life,  or  the  common  blood 
which  is  identified  with  the  life.  Whatever  being  par- 
takes in  this  life  is  holy,  and  its  holiness  may  be 
described  indifferently,  either  as  participation  in  the 
divine  life  and  nature,  or  as  participation  in  the  kindred 
blood. 

Thus  tlie  conjecture  that  sacrificial  animals  were 
originally  treated  as  kinsmen  is  simply  equivalent  to  the 
conjecture  that  sacrifices  were  drawn  from  animals  of  a 
holy  kind,  whose  lives  were  ordinarily  protected  by  reli- 
gious scruples  and  sanctions  ;  and  in  support  of  this  position 
a  great  mass  of  evidence  can  be  adduced,  not  merely  for 
Semitic  sacrifice,  but  for  ancient  sacrifice  generally. 

In  the  later  days  of  heathenism,  when  animal  food  was 

tleity,  but  as  being  themselves  instinct  witli  ilivine  power  or  life.  Thus  a 
holy  animal  is  one  which  has  a  divine  life  ;  and  if  it  lie  holy  to  a  particular 
god,  the  meaning  must  he  that  its  life  and  his  are  somehow  hound  up 
together.  From  what  is  known  of  primitive  ways  of  thought  we  may  infer 
that  this  means  that  tlie  sacred  animal  is  akin  to  tiie  god,  for  all  valid  and 
liermaueut  relation  between  individuals  is  conceived  as  kinship. 


272  MYSTIC  LECT.   VIII. 


commonly  eaten,  and  the  rule  that  all  legitimate 
slaughter  must  be  sacrificial  was  no  longer  insisted  on, 
sacrifices  were  divided  into  two  classes ;  ordinary 
sacrifices,  where  the  victims  were  sheep,  oxen  or  other 
beasts  habitually  used  for  food,  and  extraordinary 
sacrifices,  where  the  victims  were  animals  whose  flesh 
was  regarded  as  forbidden  meat.  The  Emperor  Julian  ^ 
tells  us  that  in  the  cities  of  the  Eoman  empire  such 
extraordinary  sacrifices  were  celebrated  once  or  twice 
a  year  in  mystical  ceremonies,  and  he  gives  as  an  example 
the  sacrifice  of  the  dog  to  Hecate.  In  this  case  the 
victim  was  the  sacred  animal  of  the  goddess  to  which  it 
was  offered ;  Hecate  is  represented  in  mythology  as 
accompanied  by  demoniac  dogs,  and  in  her  worship  she 
loved  to  be  addressed  by  the  name  of  Dog.^  Here, 
therefore,  the  victim  is  not  only  a  sacred  animal,  but  an 
animal  kindred  to  the  deity  to  which  it  is  sacrificed.  The 
same  principle  seems  to  lie  at  the  root  of  all  exceptional 
sacrifices  of  unclean  animals,  i.e.  animals  that  were  not 
ordinarily  eaten,  for  we  have  already  seen  that  the  idea  of 
uncleanness  and  holiness  meet  in  the  primitive  conception 
of  taboo.  I  leave  it  to  classical  scholars  to  follow  this 
out  in  its  application  to  Greek  and  Eoman  sacrifice ;  but 
as  regards  the  Semites  it  is  worth  while  to  establish  the 
point  by  going  in  detail  through  the  sacrifices  of  unclean 
beasts  that  are  known  to  us. 

1.  The  sivine.  According  to  Al  -  Nadim  the  heathen 
Harranians  sacrificed  the  swine  and  ate  swine's  flesh 
once  a  year.'"^  This  ceremony  is  ancient,  for  it  appears 
in  Cyprus  in  connection  with  the  worship  of  the  Semitic 
Aphrodite  and  Adonis.  In  the  ordinary  worship  of 
Aphrodite   swine  were  not  admitted,  but  in   Cyprus  wild 

1  Orat.  V.  p.  176.  ^  Toriili.,  De  Absf.  iii.  17,  iv.  16. 

'  Fihrist,  p.  326,  1.  Z  sq. 


LECT.  viir.  SACRIFICES.  273 


boars  were  sacrificed  once  a  year  on  April  2.^  The  same 
sacrifice  is  alluded  to  in  the  Book  of  Isaiali  as  a  heathen 
abomination,^  with  which  the  prophet  associates  the  sacri- 
fice of  two  otlier  unclean  animals,  the  dog  and  the  mouse. 
We  know  from  Lucian  that  the  swine  was  esteemed  sacro- 
sanct by  the  Syrians,^  and  that  it  was  specially  sacred  to 
Aphrodite  or  Astarte  is  affirmed  by  Antiphanes,  ap.  Athen., 
iii.  49. 

2.  The  dog.  This  sacrifice,  as  w^e  have  seen,  is  mentioned 
in  the  Book  of  Isaiah,  and  it  seems  also  to  be  alluded  to 
as  a  Punic  rite  in  Justin,  xviii.  1.  10,  where  we  read  that 
Darius  sent  a  message  to  the  Carthaginians  forbidding 
them  to  sacrifice  human  victims  and  to  eat  the  flesh  of 
dogs  :  in  the  connection  a  religious  meal  must  be  imder- 
stood.  In  this  case  the  accounts  do  not  connect  the  rite 
with  any  particular  deity  to  whom  the  dog  was  sacred,* 
but  wc  know  from  Al-Nadlm  that  the  dog  was  sacred 
among  the  Harranians.  They  offered  sacrificial  gifts  to 
it,  and  in  certain  mysteries  dogs  were  solemnly  declared 
to  be  the  brothers  of  the  mystse.'^  A  hint  as  to  the 
identity  of  the  god  to  whom  the  dog  was  sacred  may 
perhaps  be  got  from  Jacob  of  Sarug,  who  mentions  "  the 
Lord  with  the  dogs"  as  one  of  the  deities  of  Carrhai.*' 
This  god  again  may  be  compared  with  the  huntsman 
Heracles  of  the  Assyrians  *"  who  is  figured  on  cylinders 
accompanied  by  a  dog,*^  and  appears  to  be  the  same  deity 

^  Lytlus,  De  Mensih(.i,  Bonn  ed.  p.  80.  Exceptional  sacrifices  of  swine  to 
Aphrodite  also  took  place  at  Argos  (Athen.,  iii.  49)  and  in  Thcssaly  (Strabo, 
ix.  5.  17),  hut  the  Semitic  origin  of  these  rites  is  not  so  certain  as  in  the 
case  of  the  Cyprian  goddess. 

2  Isa.  Ixv.  4,  Ixvi.  3,  17.  '  Dca  Syria,  liv. 

*  Jlovcrs,  Phoenizier,  i.  404,  is  quite  unsatisfactory. 

5  Fihrist,  p.  326,  1.  27  ;  of.  p.  323,  1.  28  ;  p.  324,  1.  2. 

«  ZDMO.  xxix.  110  ;  cf.  vol.  xlii.  p.  473. 

^  Tacitus,  Ann.  xii.  13. 

8  Oazeltt  ArdUol.  1879,  p.  178  sqq. 

S 


274  MYSTIC  LECT.  VIII. 

whose  name,  as  it  occurs  on  the  monuments,  is  usually 
read  Adar.^  The  Tyrian  Heracles  or  Melcarth  also  appears 
accompanied  by  a  dog  in  the  legend  of  the  invention  of 
the  purple  dye  preserved  by  Pollux.^ 

3.  Fish,  or  at  least  certain  species  of  fish,  were  sacred 
to  Atargatis  and  forbidden  food  to  all  the  Syrians,  her 
worshippers,  who  believed — as  totem  peoples  do — that  if 
they  ate  the  sacred  flesh  they  would  be  visited  by  ulcers.^ 
Yet  Mnaseas  {ap.  A  then.,  viii.  37)  tells  us  that  fish  were 
daily  cooked  and  presented  on  the  table  of  tlie  goddess, 
being  afterwards  consumed  by  the  priests;  and  Assyrian 
cylinders  display  the  fish  laid  on  the  altar  or  presented 
before  it,  while,  in  one  example,  a  figure  which  stands  by 
in  an  attitude  of  adoration  is  clothed,  or  rather  disguised, 
in  a  gigantic  fish  skin.'*  The  meaning  of  such  a  disguise 
is  well  known  from  many  savage  rituals  ;  it  implies  that 

^  The  Sicilian  god  Adranus,  whose  sacred  dogs  are  mentioned  by  ^Elian, 
2^ at.  An.  xi.  20  (confirmed  by  monumental  evidence  ;  Ganneau,  Rec.  de 
Arch.  Or.  i.  236),  is  generally  identified  with  Adar  (the  Adrammelech  of 
the  Bible);  see  Holm,  Gesch.  Sic.  i.  95,  377. 

^  Pollux,  i.  46  ;  llalalas,  p.  32.  If  the  conjecture  that  the  Heracles 
worshipped  by  the  vohi  in  the  Cynosarges  at  Athens  was  really  the 
Phoenician  Heracles  can  be  made  out,  the  connection  of  this  deity  with 
the  dog  will  receive  further  confirmation.  For  Cynosarges  means  "  the 
dog's  yard"  (Wachsmuth,  Athen.  i.  461).  Steph.  Byz.  s.v.  explains  the 
name  by  a  legend  that  while  Diomos  was  sacrificing  to  Heracles,  a  white 
dog  snatched  the  sacrificial  pieces  and  laid  them  down  on  the  spot  where 
the  sanctuary  afterwards  stood.  The  dog  is  here  the  sacred  messenger  who 
declares  the  will  of  the  god,  like  the  eagle  of  Zeus  in  Malalas,  p.  199  ;  cf. 
Steph.  Byz.  s.v.  yaXionai.  Tlie  sanctity  of  the  dog  among  the  Phrenicians 
seems  also  to  be  confirmed  by  the  proper  names  XD^Sj  D  vN3?D,  and  by 
the  existence  of  a  class  of  sacred  ministers  called  "dogs"  (C  /.  S.  No.  86, 
cf.  Dent,  xxiii.  18  (19)).  Reinach  and  G.  Hoflfmann,  op.  cit.  p.  17,  are 
hardly  right  in  thinking  of  literal  dogs  ;  but  in  any  case  that  would  only 
strengthen  the  argument. 

In  Moslem  countries  dogs  are  still  regarded  with  a  curious  mixture  of 
respect  and  contempt.  They  are  unclean,  but  it  is  an  act  of  piety  to  feed 
them  ;  and  to  kill  a  dog,  as  I  have  observed  at  Jeddah,  is  an  act  that  excites 
a  good  deal  of  feeling. 

3  See  the  evidence  collected  by  Selden,  de  Diis  Si/ris,  Spit.  ii.  cap.  3. 

*  Menant,  Glyptique,  ii.  53. 


LECT.  VIII.  SACRIFICES.  275 

the  worshipper  presents  himself  as  a  fish,  i.e.  as  a  being 
kindred  to  his  sacrifice,  and  doubtless  also  to  the  deity  to 
which  it  is  consecrated. 

4.  The  mouse  appears  as  an  abominable  sacrifice  in 
Isa.  l.Kvi.  17,  along  with  the  swine  and  "the  abomination" 
d'p:;').  The  last  word  is  applied  in  the  Levitical  law  ^  to 
creeping  vermin  generally  (I'lc*  =  Arab,  hanash),  a  term 
which  included  the  mouse  and  other  such  small  quadrupeds 
as  we  also  call  vermin.  All  such  creatures  were  unclean  in 
an  intense  degree,  and  had  the  power  to  communicate  un- 
cleanness  to  wliatever  they  touched.  So  strict  a  taboo  is 
hardly  to  be  explained  except  by  supposing  that,  like  the 
Arabian  hanash^  they  had  supernatural  and  demoniac  quali- 
ties. And  in  fact,  in  Ezek.  viii.  10,  we  find  them  as  objects 
of  superstitious  adoration.  On  what  authority  Maimonides 
says  that  the  Harranians  sacrificed  field-mice  I  do  not  know,^ 
but  the  Biblical  evidence  is  sufficient  for  our  purpose. 

5.  The  horse  was  sacred  to  the  Sun-sjod,  for  2  Kinn;s 
xxiii.  11  speaks  of  the  horses  which  the  kings  of  Judah 
had  consecrated  to  this  deity — a  superstition  to  which 
Josiah  put  an  end.  At  Rhodes,  where  religion  is  through- 
out of  a  Semitic  type,  four  horses  were  cast  into  the  sea  as 
a  sacrifice  at  the  annual  feast  of  the  sun."*  The  winged 
horse  (Pegasus)  is  a  sacred  symbol  of  the  Carthaginians. 

6.  The  dove,  which  the  Semites  would  neither  eat  nor 
touch,  was  sacrificed  by  the  Eomans  to  Venus  ;  ^  and  as  the 
Roman  Venus-worship  of  later  times  was  largely  derived 
from  the  Phoenician  sanctuary  of  Eryx,  where  the  dove  liad 
peculiar  honour  as  the  companion  of  Astarte,*^  it  is  very 
possible  that  this  was  a  Semitic  rite,  thougli  I  have  not 

1  Lev.  xi.  41.  I  Supra,  p.  121. 

3  Ed.  Munk,  vol.  iii.  p.  64,  or  Chwolsolni,  Ssabler,  ii.  456. 

*  Festiis,  8.V.  "  Octoljer  cqiius  ; "  cf.  Pausanias,  iii.  20.  4  (sacrifice  of  horses 
to  the  San  at  Taygetus) ;  Kinship,  p.  208  sq. 

*  Propertius,  iv.  5.  62.  «  JElian,  X.  A.  iv.  2. 


276  MYSTIC 


LECT.   VIII. 


found  any  conclusive  evidence  that  it  was  so.  It  must 
certainly  have  been  a  very  rare  sacrifice  ;  for  the  dove 
among  the  Semites  had  a  quite  peculiar  sanctity,  and 
Al-Nadim  says  expressly  that  it  was  not  sacrificed  by 
the  Harranians.^  It  was,  however,  offered  by  the  Hebrews, 
in  sacrifices  which  we  shall  by  and  by  see  reason  to  regard 
as  closely  analogous  to  mystical  rites ;  and  in  Juvenal,  vi. 
459  sqq.,  the  superstitious  matrons  of  liom'e  are  represented 
as  calling  in  an  Armenian  or  Syrian  (Commagenian) 
haruspex  to  perform  the  sacrifice  of  a  dove,  a  chicken, 
a  dog,  or  even  a  child.  In  this  association  an  exceptional 
and  mystic  sacrifice  is  necessarily  implied.^ 

The  evidence  of  these  examples  is  unambiguous.  When 
an  unclean  animal  is  sacrificed  it  is  also  a  sacred  animal. 
If  the  deity  to  w^hich  it  is  devoted  is  named,  it  is  the 
deity  which  ordinarily  protects  the  sanctity  of  the  victim, 
and,  in  some  cases,  the  worshippers  either  in  words  or  by 
symbolic  disguise  claim  kinship  with  the  victim  and  the 
god.  Further,  the  sacrifice  is  generally  limited  to  certain 
solemn  occasions,  usually  annual,  and  so  has  the  character 
of  a  public  celebrity.  In  several  cases  the  worshippers 
partake  of  the  sacred  flesh,  which  at  other  times  it  would 
be  impious  to  touch.  All  this  is  exactly  what  we  find 
among  totem  peoples.  Here  also  the  sacred  animal  is 
forljidden  food,  it  is  akin  to  th-e  men  who  acknowledge 
its  sanctity,  and  if  there  is  a  god  it  is  akin  to  the  god. 
And,  finally,  the  totem  is  sometimes  sacrificed  at  an  annual 
feast,  with  special  and  solemn  ritual  In  such  cases  the 
flesh  may  be  buried  or  cast  into  a  river,  as  the  horses  of 
the  sun  w^ere  cast  into  the  sea,^  but  at  other  times  it  is 

1  Fihrist,  p.  319,1.  21. 

2  Cf.  the  nrn,  C.  I.  S.  No.  165,  L  11.  Some  other  sacrifices  of  wild 
animals,  which  present  analogies  to  these  mystic  rites,  will  be  considered  in 
Additional  Note  G,  Sacrijices  of  Sacred  Animals. 

'  Bancroft,  iii.  168  ;  Frazer,  Totemism,  p.  48. 


LECT.   VIII. 


SACRIFICES.  277 


eaten  as  a  mystic  sacrament.^  These  points  of  contact 
with  the  most  primitive  superstition  cannot  be  accidental ; 
they  show  that  the  mystical  sacrifices,  as  Julian  calls 
them,  the  sacrifices  of  animals  not  ordinarily  eaten,  are  not 
the  invention  of  later  times,  but  have  preserved  with  great 
accuracy  the  features  of  a  sacrificial  ritual  of  extreme 
antiquity. 

To  a  superficial  view  the  ordinary  sacrifices  of  domestic 
animals,  such  as  were  commonly  used  for  food,  seem  to 
stand  on  quite  another  footing ;  yet  we  have  been  led, 
by  an  independent  line  of  reasoning,  based  on  the 
evidence  that  all  sacrifice  was  originally  the  act  of  the 
clan,  to  surmise  that  they  also  in  their  origin  were 
rare  and  solemn  offerings  of  victims  whose  lives  were 
ordinarily  deemed  sacred,  because,  like  the  unclean  sacred 
animals,  they  were  of  the  kin  of  the  worshippers  and  of 
their  god.^ 

And  in  point  of  fact  precisely  this  kind  of  respect  and 
reverence  is  paid  to  domestic  animals  among  many  pastoral 

'  The  proof  of  this  has  to  be  put  together  out  of  the  fragmentary  evidence 
which  is  generally  all  that  we  possess  on  such  matters.  As  regards  America 
the  most  conclusivo  evidence  comes  from  Mexico,  where  the  gods,  though 
certainly  of  totem  origin,  had  become  anthropomorphic,  and  the  victim,  who 
was  regarded  as  the  representative  of  the  god,  was  liunian.  At  other  times 
paste  idols  of  the  god  were  eaten  sacranientally.  But  that  the  ruder 
Americans  attached  a  sacramental  virtue  to  the  eating  of  tlie  totem  appears 
from  what  is  related  of  the  Bear  clan  of  the  Ouataouaks  (Lettres  ddif.  el  cin\, 
vi.  171),  who  when  they  kill  a  bear  make  him  a  feast  of  his  own  flesh,  and 
tell  him  not  to  resent  being  killed;  ''tu  as  de  I'esprit,  tu  vols  que  nos 
enfants  soutfrent  la  faini,  ils  t'aiment,  ils  veulent  te  faire  cntrer  dans  leur 
corps,  n'est  11  pas  glorieux  d'etre  mange  par  des  enfans  de  Capitaiue  ? "  The 
bear  feast  of  the  Ainos  of  Japan  (fully  described  by  Scheube  in  Mitth. 
deutsch.  Gesellnch,  S.  und  S.  0.  Asiens,  No.  22,  p.  4-1  sq.)  is  a  sacriticial 
feast  on  the  flesh  of  the  bear,  which  is  honoured  as  divine,  and  slain 
with  many  apologies  to  the  gods,  on  the  pretext  of  necessity.  The 
eating  of  the  totem  as  medicine  (Frazer,  p.  23)  belongs  to  the  same  circle 
of  ideas.     See  also  infra,  p.  296. 

-  Strictly  speaking  the  thing  is  much  more  than  a  surmise,  even  on  the 
evidence  already  before  us.  But  I  prefer  to  understate  rather  tlian  overstate 
the  case  in  a  matter  of  such  complexity. 


278  SANCTITY 


LECT.  vin. 


peoples  in  various  parts  of  the  globe.  They  are  regarded 
on  the  one  hand  as  the  friends  and  kinsmen  of  men,  and 
on  the  other  hand  as  sacred  beings  of  a  nature  akin  to  the 
gods ;  their  slaughter  is  permitted  only  under  exceptional 
circumstances,  and  in  such  cases  is  never  used  to  provide 
a  private  meal,  but  necessarily  forms  the  occasion  of  a 
public  feast,  if  not  of  a  public  sacrifice.  The  clearest  case 
is  that  of  Africa.  Agatharchides,^  describing  the  Troglodyte 
nomads  of  East  Africa,  a  primitive  pastoral  people  in  the 
polyandrous  stage  of  society,  tells  us  that  their  whole 
sustenance  was  derived  from  their  flocks  and  herds.  When 
pasture  abounded,  after  the  rainy  reason,  they  lived  on 
milk  mingled  with  blood  (drawn  apparently,  as  in  Arabia, 
from  the  living  animal),  and  in  the  dry  season  they  had 
recourse  to  the  flesh  of  aged  or  weakly  beasts.  But  the 
butchers  were  regarded  as  unclean.  Further,  "  they  gave 
the  name  of  parent  to  no  human  being,  but  only  to  the  ox 
and  cow,  the  ram  and  ewe,  from  whom  they  had  their 
nourishment."  Here  we  have  all  the  features  which  our 
theory  requires ;  the  beasts  are  sacred  and  kindred  beings, 
for  they  are  the  source  of  human  life  and  subsistence. 
They  are  killed  only  in  time  of  need,  and  the  butchers  are 
unclean,  which  implies  that  the  slaughter  was  an  impious 
act. 

Similar  institutions  are  found  among  all  the  purely 
pastoral  African  peoples,  and  have  persisted  with  more  or 
less  modification  or  attenuation  down  to  our  own  time.""* 
The  common  food  of  these  races  is  milk  or  game,^  cattle 

1  The  extracts  of  Photius  and  Diodorus  are  printed  together  in  Fr.  Geog. 
Or.  i.  153.     The  former  has  some  points  which  the  latter  omits. 

^  For  the  evidence  of  the  sanctity  of  cattle  among  modern  rude  peoples,  I 
am  largely  indebted  to  my  friend  Frazcr. 

'  Sallust,  Jttgurtha,  89  (Numidians)  ;  Alberti,  De  Kaffers  (Amst.  1810), 
p.  37  ;  Lichtenstein,  Bci.ien,  i.  444.  Out  of  a  multitude  of  proofs  I  cite 
these,  as  being  drawn  from  the  parts  of  the  continent  most  remote  from  one 
another. 


LECT.   VIII. 


OF   CATTLE.  279 


are  seldom  killed  for  food,  and  only  on  exceptional 
occasions,  such  as  the  proclamation  of  a  war,  the  circum- 
cision of  a  youth,  or  a  wedding,^  or  in  order  to  obtain 
a  skin  for  clothing,  or  because  the  creature  is  maimed 
or  old.^ 

In  such  cases  the  feast  is  public,  as  among  Nilus's 
Saracens,^  all  blood  relations  and  even  all  neighbours  having 
a  right  to  partake.  Further,  the  herd  and  its  members 
are  objects  of  affectionate  and  personal  regard,''  and  are 
surrounded  by  sacred  scruples  and  taboos.  Among  the 
Caffres  the  cattle  kraal  is  sacred  ;  women  may  not  enter 
it,'  and  to  defile  it  is  a  capital  offence.^  Finally,  the 
notion  that  cattle  are  the  parents  of  men,  which  we 
find  in  Agatharchides,  survives  in  the  Zulu  myth  that 
men,  especially  great  chiefs,  "  were  belched  up  by  a 
cow." ' 

These  instances  may  suffice  to  show  how  universally 
the  attitude  towards  domestic  animals,  described  by 
Agatharchides,  is  diffused  among  the  pastoral  peoples  of 
Africa.       But  I  must   still   notice   one  peculiar  variation 

^  So  among  the  Caffres  (Fleming,  Southern  Africa,  p.  260  ;  Lichtenstein, 
Reben,  i.  442). 

*Alberti,  p.  163  (Caffres);  of.  Gen.  iii.  21,  and  Herod.,  iv.  189.  The 
religions  significance  of  the  dress  of  skin,  which  appears  in  the  last  cited 
passage,  will  occnpy  us  later. 

'  So  among  the  Zulus  {supra,  p.  266,  note)  and  among  the  Caffres 
(Alberti,  ut  supra). 

*  See  in  particular  the  general  remarks  of  Muuzinger  on  tlie  pastoral 
peoples  of  East  Africa,  Ostafr.  Studien  (2nd  ed.  1883),  p.  547  :  "  The  nomad 
values  his  cow  above  all  things,  and  weeps  for  its  death  as  for  that  of  a 
child."  Again  :  "They  have  an  incredible  attachment  to  the  old  breed  of 
cattle,  which  they  have  inherited  from  father  and  grandfather,  and  keep  a 
record  of  their  descent  " — a  trace  of  the  feeling  of  kinship  between  the  herd 
and  the  tribe,  as  in  Agatharchides.  See  also  Schwcinfurth,  Heart  of  Africa, 
i.  59  (3rd  ed.  1878),  and  compare  2  Sam.  xii.  3. 

*  Fleming,  p.  214. 

*  Lichtenstein,  i.  479,  who  adds  that  the  punishment  will  not  seem  severe 
if  we  consider  how  holy  their  cattle  are  to  them. 

^  Lang,  Myth  Ritual,  etc.  i.  179. 


280  SANCTITY 


LECT.   VIII. 


of  the  view  that  the  life  of  cattle  is  sacred,  which  occurs 
both  in  Africa  and  among  the  Semites.  Herodotus  ^  tells 
us  that  the  Libyans,  though  they  ate  oxen,  would  not  touch 
the  flesli  of  the  cow.  In  the  circle  of  ideas  which  we 
have  found  to  prevail  throughout  Africa  this  distinction 
must  be  connected,  on  the  one  hand,  with  the  prevalence 
of  kinship  through  women,  which  necessarily  made  the 
cow  more  sacred  than  the  ox,  and,  on  the  other,  with  the 
fact  that  it  is  the  cow  that  fosters  man  with  her  milk. 
The  same  rule  prevailed  in  Egypt,  where  the  cow  was 
sacred  to  Hathor-Isis,  and  also  among  the  Phoenicians, 
who  both  ate  and  sacrificed  bulls,  but  would  as  soon  have 
eaten  human  flesh  as  that  of  the  cow.^ 

The  importance  of  this  evidence  for  our  enquiry  is  all 
the  greater  because  there  is  a  growing  disposition  among 
scholars  to  recognise  an  ethnological  connection  of  a 
somewhat  close  kind  between  the  Semitic  and  African  races. 
But  the  ideas  which  I  have  attempted  to  unfold  are  not 
the  property  of  a  single  race.  How  far  the  ancient 
holiness  of  cattle,  and  especially  of  the  cow,  among  the 
Iranians,  presents  details  analogous  to  those  which  have 
come  before  us,  is  a  question  which  I  must  leave  to  the 
professed  students  of  a  very  obscure  literature ;  it  seems 
at  least  to  be  admitted  that  the  thing  is  not  an  innovation 
of  Zoroastrianism,  but  common  to  the  Iranians  with  their 
Indian  cousins,  so  that  the  origin  of  the  sacred  regard 
paid  to  the  cow  must  be  sought  in  the  primitive  nomadic 
life  of  the  Indo-European  race.     But  to  show  that  exactly 

1  Bk.  iv.  ch.  186. 

-  See  Porphyry,  Dt  Abst.  ii.  11,  for  both  nations  ;  and,  for  tlie  Egyptians, 
Herod.,  ii.  41.  The  Phoenician  usage  can  hardly  be  ascribed  to  Egyptian 
intiuence,  for  at  least  a  preference  for  male  victims  is  found  among  the 
iSemites  generally,  even  wliere  the  deity  is  a  goddess.  See  what  Chwolsobn, 
S.sabier,  ii.  77  sqq.,  adduces  in  illustration  of  the  statement  of  the  Fihrisi  that 
the  Harranians  sacrificed  only  male  victims. 


LECT.   VIK. 


OF    CATTLE.  281 


such  notions  as  we  have  found  in  Africa  appear  among 
pastoral  peoples  of  quite  difTereut  race,  I  will  cite  the  case 
of  the  Todas  of  South  India.  Here  the  domestic  animal, 
the  milk-giver  and  the  main  source  of  subsistence,  is  the 
buffalo.  "  The  buffalo  is  treated  with  great  kindness, 
even  with  a  degree  of  adoration,"  ^  and  certain  cows,  the 
descendants  from  mother  to  daughter  of  some  remote 
sacred  ancestor,  are  hung  with  ancient  cattle  bells  and 
invoked  as  divinities."  Further,  "there  is  good  reason 
for  believing  the  Todas'  assertion  that  they  have  never 
at  any  time  eaten  the  flesh  of  the  female  bufltilo,"  and 
the  male  they  eat  only  once  a  year,  when  all  the  adult 
males  in  the  village  join  in  tlie  ceremony  of  killing  and 
eating  a  young  bull  calf,  which  is  killed  with  special 
ceremonies  and  roasted  by  a  sacred  fire.  Venison,  on  the 
other  hand,  they  eat  with  pleasure.^  At  a  funeral  one 
or  two  buffaloes  are  killed ; *  "as  each  animal  falls,  men, 
women  and  children  group  themselves  round  its  head, 
and  fondle,  caress,  and  kiss  its  face,  then  sitting  in  groups 
of  pairs  .  .  .  give  way  to  wailing  and  lamentation."  These 
victims  are  not  eaten,  but  left  on  the  ground. 

These  examples  may  suffice  to  show  the  wide  diffusion 
among  rude  pastoral  peoples  of  a  way  of  regarding  sacred 
animals  with  which  the  Semitic  facts  and  the  inferences 
I  have  drawn  from  them  exactly  correspond ;  let  us  now 
enquire  how  far  similar  ideas  can  be  shewn  to  have 
prevailed  among   the   higher  races  of  antiquity.     In  this 

1  Marshall,  Travels  amoiuj  the  Todas  (1873),  p.  130. 

=  Jbid.  i>.  131. 

^  Jbid.  p.  81.  The  sacrifice  is  eaten  only  by  males.  So  among  the 
Caffres  certain  holy  i)arts  of  an  ox  must  not  be  eaten  by  women  ;  anil  in 
Hebrew  law  the  duty  of  festal  worshij)  was  confined  to  males,  tliougli  women 
were  not  excluded.  Among  the  Todas  men  and  women  habitually  eat 
apart,  as  the  Spartans  did ;  and  the  Spartan  blood-broth  may  be  compared 
with  the  Toda  animal  sacrifice. 

*  Ibid.  p.  17(3. 


282  SANCTITY  LECT.  VIII. 


connection  I  would  first  of  all  direct  your  attention  to 
the  wide  prevalence  among  all  these  nations  of  a  belief 
that  the  habit  of  slaughtering  animals  and  eating  flesh 
is  a  departure  from  the  laws  of  primitive  piety.  Except 
in  certain  ascetic  circles,  priestly  or  philosophical,  this 
opinion  bore  no  practical  fruit ;  men  ate  flesh  freely 
when  they  could  obtain  it,  but  in  their  legends  of  the 
golden  age  it  was  told  how  in  the  earliest  and  happiest 
days  of  the  race,  when  man  was  at  peace  with  the  gods 
and  with  nature,  and  the  hard  struggle  of  daily  toil  had 
not  begun,  animal  food  was  unknown,  and  all  man's  wants 
were  supplied  by  the  spontaneous  produce  of  the  bounteous 
earth.  This,  of  course,  is  not  true,  for  even  on  anatomical 
"rounds  it  is  certain  that  our  remote  ancestors  were  carni- 
vorous,  and  it  is  matter  of  observation  that  primitive 
nations  do  not  eschew  the  use  of  animal  food  in  general, 
though  certain  kinds  of  flesh  are  forbidden  on  grounds 
of  piety.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  idea  of  the  golden 
age  cannot  be  a  mere  abstract  speculation  without  any 
basis  in  tradition.  The  legend  in  which  it  is  embodied 
is  part  of  the  ancient  folk-lore  of  the  Greeks,^  and  the 
practical  application  of  the  idea  in  the  form  of  a 
precept  of  abstinence  from  flesh,  as  a  rule  of  perfection 
or  of  ceremonial  holiness,  is  first  found,  not  among  in- 
novating and  speculative  philosophers,  but  in  priestly 
circles — e.g.  in  Egypt  and  India — whose  lore  is  entirely 
based  on  tradition,  or  in  such  philosophic  schools  as 
that  of  Pythagoras,  all  whose  ideas  are  characterised 
by  an  extraordinary  regard  for  ancient  usage  and 
superstition. 

In  the  case  of  the  Egyptian  priests  the  facts  set  forth 
by  Porphyry  in  his  book  De  Ahstinentia,  iv.  6  sqq.,  on  the 

1  Hesiod,  Works  and  Days,  109  sqq.     Cf.  Treller-Robert,  I.  i.  p.  87  sq^}., 
for  the  other  literature  of  the  subject. 


LECT.  Tin.  OF   CATTLE.  283 


authority  of  Chaeremon/  enable  us  to  make  out  distinctly  the 
connection  between  the  abstinence  imposed  on  the  priests 
and  the  primitive  beliefs  and  practice  of  the  mass  of  the 
people. 

From  ancient  times  every  Egyptian  had,  according  to 
the  nome  he  lived  in,  his  own  particular  kind  of  forbidden 
flesh,  venerating  a  particular  species  of  sacred  animal, 
exactly  as  totemistic  savages  still  do.  The  priests 
extended  this  precept,  being  in  fact  the  ministers  of  a 
national  religion,  which  gathered  into  one  system  the 
worships  of  the  various  nomes  ;  but  only  some  of  them 
went  so  far  as  to  eat  no  flesh  at  all,  while  others,  who 
were  attached  to  particular  cults,  ordinarily  observed 
abstinence  only  from  certain  kinds  of  flesh,  though 
they  were  obliged  to  confine  themselves  to  a  strictly 
vegetable  diet  at  certain  religious  seasons,  when  they  were 
specially  engaged  in  holy  functions.  It  is,  however, 
obvious  that  the  multitude  of  local  prohibitions  could  not 
have  resulted  in  a  general  doctrine  of  the  superior  piety  of 
vegetarianism,  unless  the  list  of  animals  which  were  sacred 
in  one  or  other  part  of  the  country  had  included  those 
domestic  animals  which  in  a  highly  cultivated  country  like 
Egypt  must  always  form  the  chief  source  of  animal  food. 
In  Egypt  this  was  the  case,  and  indeed  the  greatest  and 
most  widely  recognised  deities  were  those  that  had  associa- 
tions with  domesticated  animals.  In  this  respect  Egyptian 
civilisation  declares  its  affinity  to  the  primitive  usages 
and  superstitions  of  the  pastoral  populations  of  Africa 
generally ;  the  Calf-god  Apis,  who  was  supposed  to  be 
incarnate  in  an  actual  calf  at  Memphis,  and  the  Cow- 
goddess  Isis-Hathor,  who  is  either  represented  in  the  form 
of  a  cow,  or  at  least  wears  a  cow's  horns,  directly  connect 

^  The  authority  is  good  ;  see  Bemays,  Theophrastoa'  Schri/t  Ueber  From- 
migktit  (Breslau,  1866),  p.  21. 


284  SANCTITY 


LECT    MU. 


the  dominant  cults  of  Egypt  with  the  sanctity  ascribed  to 
the  bovine  species  by  the  ruder  races  of  Eastern  Africa, 
with  whom  the  ox  is  the  most  important  domestic  animal ; 
and  it  is  not  therefore  surprising  to  learn  that  even  in  later 
times  the  eating  of  cow's  flesh  seemed  to  the  Egyptians 
a  practice  as  horrible  as  cannibalism.  Cows  were  never 
sacrificed,  and  though  bulls  were  offered  on  the  altar,  and 
part  of  the  flesh  eaten  in  a  sacrificial  feast,  the  sacrifice 
was  only  permitted  as  a  piaculum,  was  preceded  by  a 
solemn  fast,  and  was  accompanied  by  public  lamentation 
as  at  the  death  of  a  kinsman/  In  like  manner  at  the 
annual  sacrifice  at  Thebes  to  the  Eam-god  Amen,  the 
worshippers  bewailed  the  victim,  thus  declaring  its  kin- 
ship with  themselves,  while,  on  the  other  hand,  its  kinship 
or  identity  with  the  god  was  expressed  in  a  twofold  way, 
for  the  image  of  Amen  was  draped  in  the  skin  of  the 
sacrifice,  while  the  body  was  buried  in  a  sacred  coffin.^ 

In  Egypt  the  doctrine  that  the  highest  degree  of  holi- 
ness can  only  be  attained  by  abstinence  from  all  animal 
food  was  the  result  of  tlie  political  fusion  of  a  number  of 
local  cults  in  one  national  religion,  with  a  national  priest- 
hood that  represented  imperial  ideas.  Nothing  of  this  sort 
took  place  in  Greece  or  in  most  of  the  Semitic  lands,^  and 
in  these  accordingly  we  find  no  developed  doctrine  of 
priestly  asceticism  in  the  matter  of  food.^ 

Among  the  Greeks  and  Semites,  therefore,  the  idea  of 

1  Herod.,  ii.  39  sq.  ^  Herod.,  ii.  42. 

^  Babylonia  is  perhaps  an  exception. 

*  On  the  supposed  case  of  the  Essenes  see  Lucius's  books  on  the  Essenes 
and  Therapeutte,  and  Schiirer,  Gesch.  des  Jiid.  Volkes,  ii.  478.  The  Thera- 
jieutfe,  whether  Jews  or  Christian  monks,  appear  in  Egy[)t,  and  most 
jirobahly  they  were  Egyptian  Christians.  Later  developments  of  Semitic 
asceticism  almost  certainly  stood  under  foreign  influences,  among  which 
Buddhism  seems  to  have  had  a  larger  and  earlier  share  than  it  has  been 
usual  to  admit.  In  old  Semitic  practice,  as  among  the  modern  Jews  and  Mos- 
lems, religious  fasting  meant  abstinence  from  all  food,  not  merely  from  flesh. 


LECT.  VIII.  OF   CATTLE.  285 


a  golden  age,  and  the  trait  that  in  that  age  man  was 
vegetarian  in  his  diet,  nuist  be  of  popuhir  not  of  priestly 
origin.  Now  in  itself  the  notion  that  ancient  times  were 
better  than  modern,  that  the  earth  was  more  productive, 
men  more  pious  and  their  lives  less  vexed  with  toil  and 
sickness,  needs  no  special  explanation  ;  it  is  the  natural 
result  of  psychological  laws  which  apply  equally  to  the 
memory  of  individuals  and  the  memory  of  nations.  But 
the  particular  trait  of  primitive  vegetarianism,  as  a 
characteristic  feature  of  the  good  old  times,  does  not  fall 
under  this  general  explanation,  and  can  only  have  arisen 
at  a  time  when  there  w^as  still  some  active  feeling  of 
pious  scruple  about  killing  and  eating  flesh.  This  scruple 
cannot  have  applied  to  all  kinds  of  flesh,  e.g.  to  game,  but 
it  must  have  covered  the  very  kinds  of  flesh  that  were 
ordinarily  eaten  in  the  agricultural  stage  of  society,  to 
which  the  origin  of  the  legend  of  the  golden  age  un- 
doubtedly belongs.  Flesh,  therefore,  in  the  legend  means 
the  flesh  of  domestic  animals,  and  the  legend  expresses 
a  feeling  of  respect  for  the  lives  of  these  animals,  and  an 
idea  that  their  slaughter  for  food  was  an  innovation  not 
consistent  with  pristine  piety. 

When  we  look  into  the  details  of  the  traditions  which 
later  writers  cite  in  support  of  the  doctrine  of  primaeval 
vegetarianism,  we  see  that  in  effect  this,  and  no  more  than 
this,  is  contained  in  them.  The  general  statement  that 
early  man  respected  all  animal  life  is  mere  inference,  Init 
popular  tradition  and  ancient  ritual  alike  bore  testimony 
that  the  life  of  the  swine  and  the  sheep,'  but  above  all  of 
the  ox,^  was  of  old  regarded  as  sacred,  and  might  not  be 

1  Porph.,  De  Abst.  ii.  9. 

-  Ibid.  ii.  10,  29  nq.  ;  Plato,  Le(jes,  vi.  p.  782  ;  Pausanias,  viii.  2.  1  n'lq. 
compared  with  i.  28.  10  (bloodless  sacrifices  under  Cecrops,  sacrifice  of  an 
ox  in  the  time  of  Erecbtheus). 


286  THE   BTJPHONIA  lect.  viii. 

taken  away  except  for  religious  purposes,  and  even  then 
only  with  special  precautions  to  clear  the  worshippers  from 
the  guilt  of  murder. 

To  make  this  quite  plain  it  may  be  well  to  go  in  some 
detail  into  the  most  important  case  of  all,  that  of  the  ox. 
That  it  was  once  a  capital  offence  to  kill  an  ox,  both  in 
Attica  and  in  the  Peloponnesus,  is  attested  by  Varro.^  So 
far  as  Athens  is  concerned  this  statement  seems  to  be 
drawn  from  the  legend  that  was  told  in  connection  with 
the  annual  sacrifice  of  the  Diipolia,  where  the  victim  was  a 
bull,  and  its  death  was  followed  by  a  solemn  enquiry  as  to 
who  was  responsible  for  the  act.^  In  this  trial  every  one 
who  had  anything  to  do  with  the  slaughter  was  called  as  a 
party ;  the  maidens  who  drew  water  to  sharpen  the  axe 
and  knife  threw  the  blame  on  the  sharpeners,  they  put  it 
on  the  man  who  handed  the  axe,  he  on  the  man  who 
struck  down  the  victim,  and  he  again  on  the  one  who  cut 
its  throat,  who  finally  fixed  the  responsibility  on  the  knife, 
which  was  accordingly  found  guilty  of  murder  and  cast 
into  the  sea.  According  to  the  legend  this  act  was  a  mere 
dramatic  imitation  of  a  piacular  sacrifice  devised  to  expiate 
the  offence  of  one  Sopatros,  who  killed  an  ox  that  he  saw 
eating  the  cereal  gifts  from  the^  table  of  the  gods.  This 
impious  offence  was  followed  by  famine,  but  the  oracle 
declared  that  the  guilt  might  be  expiated  if  the  slayer 
were  punished  and  the  victim  raised  up  again  in  connection 
with  the  same  sacrifice  in  which  it  died,  and  that  it  would 
then  go  well  with  them  if  they  tasted  of  the  flesh  and  did 
not  hold  back.  Sopatros  himself,  who  had  fled  to  Crete, 
undertook  to  return  and  devise  a  means  of  carrying  out 
these  injunctions,  provided  that  the  whole  city  would  share 
the   responsibility   of    the   murder    that    weighed    on    his 

1  B.  JR.  ii.  5. 

^  Pausanias,  i.  24.  4  ;  Theophrastus  ajy.  Porph.,  De  Ahst.  ii.  30. 


LECT.   VIII. 


AT    ATHENS.  287 


conscience  ;  and  so  the  ceremonial  was  devisetl,  wliicli  con- 
tinued to  be  observed  down  to  a  late  date.^  Of  course  the 
legend  as  such  has  no  value  ;  it  is  derived  from  the  ritual, 
and  not  vice,  versa ;  but  the  ritual  itself  shews  clearly  that 
the  slaughter  was  viewed  as  a  murder,  and  that  it  was  felt 
to  be  necessary,  not  only  to  go  through  the  form  of  throw- 
ing the  guilt  on  the  knife,  but  to  distribute  the  responsibility 
as  widely  as  possible,  by  employing  a  number  of  sacrificial 
ministers — who  it  may  be  observed  were  chosen  from 
different  kindreds — and  making  it  a  public  duty  to  taste 
of  the  flesh.  Here,  therefore,  we  have  a  well-marked  case 
of  the  principle  that  sacrifice  is  not  to  be  excused  except 
by  the  participation  of  the  whole  community."  This  rite 
does  not  stand  alone.  At  Tenedos  the  priest  who  offered 
a  bull  -  calf  to  Dionysus  av6 pu)7roppaiarri<i  was  attacked 
with  stones  and  had  to  flee  for  his  life,^  and  at  Corinth  in 
the  annual  sacrifice  of  a  goat  to  Hera  Acra^a,  care  was 
taken  to  shift  the  responsibility  of  the  death  off  the 
shoulders  of  the  community  by  employing  hirelings  as 
ministers.  Even  they  did  no  more  than  hide  the  knife  in 
such  a  way  that  the  goat,  scraping  with  its  feet,  procured 
its  own  death.'*  But  indeed  the  idea  that  the  slaughter 
of  a  bull  was  properly  a  murder,  and  only  to  be  justified 
on  exceptional  sacrificial  occasions,  must  once  have  been 
general  in  Greece ;  for  ^ovcpovta  ((3oucf)ove2v,  /3ou(p6vo<;)  or 
"  ox-murder,"    which    in    Athens    was    the    name    of    the 

^  Aristophanes  alludes  to  it  as  a  very  old-world  rite  (Nubes,  985),  but  the 
observauce  was  still  kept  up  in  the  days  of  Theophrastus  in  all  its  old 
quaintness.  In  Pausanias's  time  it  had  undergone  some  simplilication, 
unless  his  account  is  inaccurate. 

-  The  further  feature  that  tlie  ox  chooses  itself  as  victim,  by  approaching 
the  altar  and  eating  the  gifts  laid  on  it,  is  noticeable,  both  because  a  similar 
rite  recurs  at  Eryx,  as  will  be  mentioned  presently,  and  because  in  tliis  way 
the  victim  eats  of  the  table  of  the  gods,  i.e.  is  acknowledged  as  divine. 

3  .Elian,  N.  A.  xii.  34. 

*  Hesychius,  s.v.  a'!l  alyx  ;  Zenobius  on  the  same  proverb  ;  Schol.  on  Eurip., 
Medea. 


288  THE   SEMITIC 


LECT.   ■\T1I. 


peculiar  sacrifice  of  the  Diipolia,  is  in  older  Greek  a 
general  term  for  the  slaughter  of  oxen  for  a  sacrificial  feast.^ 
And  that  the  "  ox-murder "  must  be  taken  quite  literally 
appears  in  the  sacrifice  at  Tenedos,  where  the  bull-calf 
wears  the  cothurnus  and  its  dam  is  treated  like  a  woman 
in  childbed.  Here  the  kinship  of  the  victim  with  man  is 
clearly  expressed,  but  so  also  is  his  kinship  with  the 
"  man-slaying "  god  to  whom  the  sacrifice  is  offered,  for 
the  cothurnus  is  proper  to  Bacchus,  and  that  god  was  often 
represented  and  invoked  as  a  bull.^ 

The  same  combination  of  ideas  appears  in  the  Hebrew 
and  Phoenician  traditions  of  primitive  abstinence  from  flesh 
and  of  the  origin  of  sacrifice.  The  evidence  in  this  case 
requires  to  be  handled  with  some  caution,  for  the  Phoe- 
nician traditions  come  to  us  from  late  authors,  who  are 
gravely  suspected  of  tampering  with  the  legends  they 
record,  and  the  Hebrew  records  in  the  Book  of  Genesis, 
though  they  are  undoubtedly  based  on  ancient  popular 
lore,  have  been  recast  under  the  influence  of  a  higher  faith, 
and  purged  of  such  elements  as  were  manifestly  inconsistent 
with  Old  Testament  monotheism.  As  regards  the  Hebrew 
accounts,  a  distinction  must  be  drawn  between  the  earlier 
Jahvistic  story  and  the  post-exile  narrative  of  the  priestly 
historian.  In  the  older  account,  just  as  in  the  Greek  fable 
of  the  Golden  Age,  man,  in  his  pristine  state  of  innocence, 
lived  at  peace  with  all  animals,^  eating  the  spontaneous 
fruits  of  the  earth ;  but  after  the  fall  he  was  sentenced  to 
earn  his  bread  by  agricultural  toil.      At  the  same  time  his 

1  See  Iliad,  vii.  466  ;  the  Homeric  hymn  to  Mercury,  436,  in  a  story  wliich 
seems  to  be  one  of  the  many  legends  about  the  origin  of  sacrifice  ;  ^sch. 
Prom.  530. 

-  See  especially  Plutarch,  Qu.  Gr.  36.  Another  example  to  the  same 
effect  is  that  of  the  goat  dressed  up  as  a  maiden,  which  was  offered  to 
Aitemis  Mnnychia,  {Par amiogr.  Gr.  i.  402,  ami  Eustathius  as  there  cited  by 
the  editors). 

»  Cf.  Isa.  xi.  6  .s^. 


LECT.  Yiii.  GOLDEN    AGE.  289 

war  with  hurtful  creatures  (the  serpent)  began,  and 
domestic  animals  began  to  be  slain  sacriticially,  and  their 
skins  used  for  clothing.^  In  the  priestly  history,  on  the 
other  hand,  man's  dominion  over  animals,  and  seemingly 
also  the  agricultural  life,  in  which  animals  serve  man  in 
the  work  of  tillage,  are  instituted  at  the  creation.'  In  this 
narrative  there  is  no  Garden  of  Eden,  and  no'  Fall  except 
the  growing  corruption  that  precedes  the  Flood.  After  the 
Flood  man  receives  the  right  to  kill  and  eat  animals,  if 
their  blood  is  poured  upon  the  ground,^  but  sacrifice  begins 
only  with  the  Mosaic  dispensation.  Now,  as  sacrifice  and 
slaughter  were  never  separated,  in  the  case  of  domestic 
animals,  till  the  time  of  Deuteronomy,  this  form  of  the 
story  cannot  be  ancient  ;  it  rests  on  the  post-Deuteronomic 
law  of  sacrifice,  and  especially  on  Lev.  xvii.  10  sq.  The 
original  Hebrew  tradition  is  that  of  the  Jahvistic  story, 
which  agrees  with  Greek  legend  in  connecting  the  sacrifice 
of  domestic  animals  with  a  fall  from  the  state  of  pristine 
innocence.*  This,  of  course,  is  not  the  main  feature  in  the 
Biblical  story  of  the  Fall,  nor  is  it  one  on  which  the  narrator 
lays  stress,  or  to  which  he  seems  to  attach  any  special 
significance.  But  for  tliat  very  reason  it  is  to  be  presumed 
tliat  this  feature  in  the  story  is  primitive,  and  that  it  must 
be  explained,  like  the  corresponding  Greek  legend,  not  by 

'  Gen.  ii.  16  fqq.,  iii.  15,  21,  iv.  4.  I  am  disposed  to  agree  with  Budde 
{Bibl.  Urgeschichte,  p.  83)  that  the  words  of  ii.  15,  "  to  dress  it  and  to  keep 
it,"  are  by  a  later  hand.  They  agree  with  Gen.  i.  26  sqq.  (priestly),  but  not 
with  iii.  17  (Jahvistic). 

-  Gen.  i.  28,  29,  where  the  use  of  corn  as  well  as  of  the  fruit  of  trees  is 
implied. 

^  Gen.  ix.  1  sq. 

*  The  Greek  legend  in  the  Works  and  Days  agrees  with  the  Jahvistic 
story  also  in  ascribing  the  Fall  to  the  fault  of  a  woman.  But  this  trait  does 
not  seem  to  apjwar  in  all  forms  of  the  Greek  story  (see  Pn-ller- Robert,  i.  94 
sq.),  and  the  estrangement  between  gods  and  men  is  sometimes  ascribed  to 
Prometheus,  who  is  also  regarded  as  the  inventor  of  fire  and  of  animal 
sacrifice. 

T 


290  PHCENICIAN 


LECT.    VIII. 


the  aid  of  principles  peculiar  to  the  Old  Testament  revela- 
tion, but  by  considerations  of  a  more  general  kind.  There 
are  other  features  in  the  story  of  the  Garden  of  Eden — 
especially  the  tree  of  life — which  prove  that  the  original 
basis  of  the  narrative  is  derived  from  the  common  stock  of 
North  Semitic  folk-lore ;  and  tliat  this  common  stock  in- 
cluded the  idea  of  primitive  vegetarianism  is  confirmed  by 
Philo  Byblius,^  whose  legend  of  the  primitive  men,  who 
lived  only  on  the  fruits  of  the  soil  and  paid  divine  honour 
to  these,  has  too  peculiar  a  form  to  be  regarded  as  a  mere 
transcript  either  from  the  Bible  or  from  Greek  literature. 

It  is  highly  improbable  that  among  the  ancient  Semites 
the  story  of  a  golden  age  of  primitive  fruit-eating  can  have 
had  its  rise  in  any  other  class  of  ideas  than  those  which 
led  to  the  formation  of  a  precisely  similar  legend  in  Greece. 
The  Greeks  concluded  that  primitive  man  did  not  eat  the 
flesh  of  domestic  animals  because  their  sacrificial  ritual 
regarded  the  death  of  a  victim  as  a  kind  of  murder,  only  to 
be  justified  under  special  circumstances,  and  when  it  was 
accompanied  by  special  precautions,  for  which  a  definite 
historical  origin  was  assigned.  And  just  in  the  same  way 
the  Cypro-Phoenician  legend  which  Porphyry  ^  quotes  from 
Asclepiades,  to  prove  that  the  early  Phoenicians  did  not  eat 
flesh,  turns  on  the  idea  that  the  death  of  a  victim  was 
originally  a  surrogate  for  human  sacrifice,  and  that  the 
first  man  who  dared  to  taste  flesh  was  punished  with  death. 
The  details  of  this  story,  which  exactly  agree  with  Lamb's 
humorous  account  of  the  discovery  of  the  merits  of  roast 
sucking  pig,  are  puerile  and  cannot  be  regarded  as  part  of 
an  ancient  tradition,  but  the  main  idea  does  not  seem  to 
be  mere  invention.  We  have  already  seen  that  the  Phoeni- 
cians would  no  more  eat  cow-beef  than  human  flesh  ;  it 

1  Ap.  Eus.,  Pr.  Ev.  i.  106  {Fr.  Hist.  Gr.  iii.  565). 

2  Be  Ahst.  iv.  15. 


i.KCT.  viir.  SACRIFICES.  291 

can  hardly,  tlierefore,  be  ([uestiouud  Lluit  in  ancient  times 
the  whole  bovine  race  had  such  a  measure  of  sanctity  as 
would  give  even  to  the  sacrifice  of  a  bull  the  very  character 
that  our  theory  requires.  And  when  Asclepiades  states 
that  every  victim  was  originally  regarded  as  a  surrogate 
for  a  human  sacritice,  he  is  confirmed  in  a  remarkable  way 
by  the  Elohistic  account  of  the  origin  of  burnt-sacrifice  in 
Gen.  xxii.,  where  a  ram  is  accepted  in  lieu  of  Isaac.  This 
narrative  presents  another  remarkable  point  of  contact 
with  Phoenician  belief.  Abraham  says  that  God  Himself 
will  provide  the  sacrifice  (ver.  8),  and  at  ver,  1.')  the  ram 
presents  itself  unsought  as  an  offering.  Exactly  this  prin- 
ciple was  observed  down  to  late  times  at  the  great  Astarte 
temple  at  Eryx,  where  the  victims  were  drawn  from  the 
sacred  herds  nourished  at  the  sanctuary,  and  were  believed 
to  offer  themselves  spontaneously  at  the  altar.^  This  is 
({uite  an.alogous  to  the  usage  at  the  Diipolia,  where  a 
number  of  cattle  were  driven  round  the  sacred  table,  and 
the  bull  was  selected  for  slaughter  that  approached  it  and  ate 
of  the  sacred  popana,  and  must  be  regarded  as  one  of  the 
many  forms  and  fictions  adopted  to  free  the  worshippers 
of  responsibility  for  the  death  of  the  victim.  All  this 
goes  to  show  that  the  animal  sacrifices  of  the  Phoenicians 
were  regarded  as  quasi-human.  But  that  the  sacrificial 
kinds  were  also  viewed  as  kindred  to  the  gods  may  be  con- 
cluded from  the  way  in  which  the  gods  were  represented. 
The  idolatrous  Israelites  worshipped  Jehovah  under  the 
form  of  a  steer,  and  the  second  commandment  implies  that 
idols  were  made  in  tlie  shape  of  many  animals.  So,  too, 
the  liull  of  Enropa,  Zeus  Asterius,  is,  as  his  epithet  implies, 

1  iElian,  jV.  A.  x.  50  ;  cf.  Isa.  liii.  7  ;  Jer.  xi.  19  (R.V.) ;  but  especially 
1  Sam.  vi.  14,  wheif  the  kiiie  halt  at  the  sacrificial  stone  (Diog.  Lacrt.,  i. 
10.  3).  That  the  victim  presents  itself  spontaneously  or  comes  to  the  altar 
willingly  is  a  feature  in  many  worships  (I'orph.,  De  Abst.  i.  25 ;  Aristotle, 
Mir.  Auic.  137). 


292  COW-ASTARTE  i.f.ct.  vm. 

the  male  counterpart  of  Astarte,  with  whom  Europa  was 
identified  at  Sidon.^  Astarte  herself  was  figured  crowned 
with  a  bull's  head,"  and  the  place  name  Ashteroth 
Karnaim  ^  is  derived  from  the  sanctuary  of  a  horned 
Astarte.  It  may  indeed  be  questioned  whether  this  last  is 
identical  with  the  cow-Astarte  of  Sidon,  or  is  rather  a 
sheep-goddess ;  for  in  Deut.  vii.  1 3  the  produce  of  the 
flock  is  called  the  "  Ashtaroth  of  the  sheep  " — an  antique 
expression  that  must  have  a  religious  origin.  This  sheep- 
Aphrodite  was  specially  worshipped  in  Cyprus,  where 
her  annual  mystic  or  piacular  sacrifice  was  a  sheep, 
and  was  presented  by  worshippers  clad  in  sheepskins,  thus 
declaring  their  kinship  at  once  with  the  victim  and  with 
the  deity.* 

It  is  well  to  observe  that  in  the  most  ancient  nomadic 
times,  to  which  the  sanctity  of  domestic  animals  must  be 
referred,  the  same  clan  or  community  will  not  generally 
be  found  to  breed  more  than  one  kind  of  domestic  animal. 
Thus  in  Arabia,  though  the  lines  of  separation  are  not 
so  sharp  as  we  must  suppose  them  to  have  formerly 
been,  there  is  still  a  broad  distinction  between  the 
camel  -  breeding  tribes  of  the  upland  plains  and  the 
shepherd  tribes  of  the  mountains ;  and  in  like  manner 
sheep  and  goats  are  tlie  flocks  appropriate  to  the  steppes 
of  Eastern  Palestine,  while  kine  and  oxen  are  more 
suitable  for  the  well-watered  Pha3nician  mountains.  Thus 
in  the  one  place  we  may  expect  to  find  a  sheep-Astarte, 

1  De  Dea  Syria,  iv.  ;  Kinshijy,  ]i.  306. 

2  Philo  Byb.,/ir.  24  {Fr.  Hist.  Gr.  iii.  569). 

^  Gen.  xiv.  5.  Kiieiien  in  his  paper  on  De  Alelechetli  des  Ilemels,  p.  37, 
thinks  it  possible  that  the  true  reading  is  "Ashteroth  and  Karnaim." 
But  the  identity  of  the  later  Carnain  or  Camion  with  Ashtaroth  or  n"inL*'y3, 
"the  temple  of  Astarte"  (Josh.  xxi.  27),  is  confirraed  by  the  fact  thnt  tliere 
was  a  Ts^svo;  or  sacred  enclosure  there  (1  Mac.  v.  43).  See  further  ZDMG., 
xxix.  431,  note  1. 

*  See  Additional  Note  H,  The  Sacrijice  of  a  Sheep  to  the  Cyprian  Apthrodite. 


I.KCT.  YMi.  AND    SHEEP- ASTARTE.  293 

and  in  another  a  cow -goddess,  and  the  Hebrew  idiom 
in  Deut.  vii.  13  agrees  with  the  fact  that  before  the 
conquest  of  agricultural  Palestine,  the  Hebrews,  like  their 
kinsmen  of  Moab,  nnist  have  been  mainly  shepherds  not 
cowherds.^ 

I  have  now,  I  think,  said  enough  about  the  sanctity  of 
domestic  animals  ;  the  ai)plication  to  the  doctrine  of  sacri- 
fice must  be  left  for  another  lecture. 

^  The  great  ancestress  of  the  house  of  Joseph  is  Kaohel,  "the  ewe."     For 
the  Moabites  see  2  Kin^s  iii.  4. 


LECTUIiE   IX. 

THE     SACRAMENTAL     EFFICACY     OF     ANIMAL     SACRIFICE,     AND 

COGNATE      ACTS      OF     RITUAL THE     BLOOD     COVENANT 

BLOOD    AND    HAIR    OFFERINGS. 

In  the  course  of  the  last  lecture  we  were  led  to  look  with 
some  exactness  into  the  distinction  drawn  in  the  later  aues 
of  ancient  paganism  between  ordinary  sacrifices,  where  the 
victim  is  one  of  the  animals  commonly  used  for  human 
food,  and  extraordinary  or  mystical  sacrifices,  where  the  signi- 
ficance of  the  rite  lies  in  an  exceptional  act  of  communion 
with  the  godhead,  by  participation  in  holy  flesh  which  is 
ordinarily  forbidden  to  man.  Analysing  this  distinction, 
and  carrying  back  our  examination  of  the  evidence  to  the 
primitive  stage  of  society  in  which  sacrificial  ritual  first 
took  shape,  we  were  led  to  conclude  that  in  the  most 
ancient  times  all  sacrificial  animals  had  a  sacrosanct  cha- 
racter, and  that  no  kind  of  beast  was  offered  to  the  gods 
which  was  not  too  holy  to  be  slain  and  eaten  without  a 
religious  purpose,  and  without  the  consent  and  active 
participation  of  the  whole  clan. 

For  the  most  primitive  times,  therefore,  the  distinction 
drawn  by  later  paganism  between  ordinary  and  extra- 
ordinary sacrifices  disappears.  In  both  cases  the  sacred 
function  is  the  act  of  the  whole  community,  which  is 
conceived  as  a  circle  of  brethren,  united  witli  one  another 
and  with  their  god  by  participation  in  one  life  or  life-blood. 
The  same  blood  is  supposed  to  How  also  in  the  veins  of  the 

20i 


LECT.  IX.  THE    BLOOD    BOND.  295 


victim,  so  that  its  death  is  at  once  a  shedding  of  the  tribal 
blood  and  a  violation  of  the  sanctity  of  the  divine  life  that 
is  transfused  through  every  member,  human  or  irrational, 
of  the  sacred  circle.  Nevertheless  the  slaughter  of  such 
a  victim  is  permitted  or  required  on  solemn  occasions,  and 
all  the  tribesmen  partake  of  its  flesh,  that  they  may 
thereby  cement  and  seal  their  mystic  unity  with  one 
another  and  with  their  god.  In  later  times  we  find  the 
conception  current  that  any  food  which  two  men  partake 
of  together,  so  that  the  same  substance  enters  into  their 
flesh  and  blood,  is  enough  to  establish  some  sacred  unity 
of  life  between  them  ;  but  in  ancient  times  this  significance 
seems  to  be  always  attached  to  participation  in  tlie  flesh  of 
a  sacrosanct  victim,  and  the  solemn  mystery  of  its  death 
is  justified  by  the  consideration  that  only  in  this  way  can 
the  sacred  cement  be  procured  which  creates  or  keeps  alive 
a  living  bond  of  union  between  the  worshippers  and  their 
god.  This  cement  is  nothing  else  than  the  actual  life  of 
the  sacred  and  kindred  animal,  which  is  conceived  as 
residing  in  its  flesh,  l)ut  especially  in  its  blood,  and  so,  in 
the  sacred  meal,  is  actually  distributed  among  all  the 
participants,  each  of  whom  incorporates  a  particle  of  it 
with  his  own  individual  life. 

The  notion  that,  by  eating  the  flesh,  or  particularly  by 
drinking  the  blood,  of  another  living  being,  a  man  absorbs 
its  nature  or  life  into  his  own,  is  one  which  appears 
among  primitive  peoples  in  many  forms.  It  lies  at  the 
root  of  the  widespread  practice  of  drinking  the  fresh  blood 
of  enemies — a  practice  which  was  familiar  to  certain 
tribes  of  the  Aral>s  before  Mohammed  and  which  tradition 
still  ascribes  to  the  wild  race  of  Cahtun  ^ — and  also  of  the 


1  See  the  evidence  in  Khixhip,  p.  284  ;  and  cf.  Doughty,  ii.  41,  where  the 
better  accounts  seem  to  limit  tlie  drinking  of  human  blood  by  the  Cahtiin 
to  the  blood  covenant. 


296  THE    BLOOD  lect.  ix. 

habit  observed  by  many  savage  liuutsineii  of  eating  some 
part  {e.g.  the  liver)  of  dangerous  carnivora,  in  order 
that  the  courage  of  the  animal  may  pass  into  them. 
And  in  some  parts  of  the  world,  where  men  have  the 
privilege  of  choosing  a  special  kind  of  sacred  animal 
either  in  lieu  of,  or  in  addition  to,  the  clan  totem, 
we  find  that  the  compact  between  the  man  and  the 
species  that  he  is  thenceforth  to  regard  as  sacred  is 
sealed  by  killing  and  eating  an  animal  of  the  species, 
which  from  that  time  forth  becomes  forbidden  food  to 
him.^ 

But  the  most  notable  application  of  the  idea  is  in  the 
rite  of  blood-brotherhood,  examples  of  which  are  found  all 
over  the  world.^  In  the  simplest  form  of  this  rite  two 
men  become  brothers  by  opening  their  veins  and  sucking 
one  another's  blood.  Thenceforth  their  lives  are  not  two 
but  one.  This  form  of  covenant  is  still  known  in  the 
Lebanon  ^  and  in  some  parts  of  Arabia.*  In  ancient 
Arabic  literature  there  are  many  references  to  the  blood 
covenant,  but  instead  of  human  blood  that  of  a  victim  slain 
at  the  sanctuary  is  employed.  The  ritual  in  this  case  is 
that  all  who  share  in  the  compact  must  dip  their  hands 
into  the  gore,  which  at  the  same  time  is  applied  to  the 
sacred  stone  that  symbolises  the  deity,  or  is  poured  forth 
at   its  base.      The   dipping   of    the    hands    into    the    dish 

^  Frazer  {Totemism,  p.  54)  has  collected  evidence  of  the  killing,  hut  not 
of  the  eating.  For  the  latter  he  refers  me  to  Cruickshank,  Guld  Coast 
(1853),  p.  UZsq. 

^  See  the  collection  of  evidence  in  Trumbnll,  The  Blood  Covenant  (New 
York,  1885);  and  compare  for  the  Arabs,  Kinship,  pp.  48  sqq.,  261  ;  AVell- 
hausen,  p.  120  ;  Goldziher,  LiteraturU.  f.  or.  Phil.  1886,  p.  24,  Muh. 
Stud.  p.  67.  In  what  follows  I  do  not  quote  examples  in  detail  for  things 
sufficiently  exemplified  in  the  books  just  cited. 

^  Trumbull,  p.  5  sq. 

*  Doughty,  ii.  41.  The  value  of  the  evidence  is  quite  independent  of  the 
accuracy  of  the  statement  that  the  Cahtan  still  practise  the  rite  ;  at  least 
the  tradition  of  such  a  rite  subsists.     See  also  Trumbull,  p.  9. 


LECT.    IX. 


COVENANT.  2  97 


implies  coinimmiou  in  an  act  of  eating/  and  so  tlie 
members  of  the  bond  are  called  "  blood-lickers."  There 
seems  to  be  no  example  in  the  old  histories  and  poems  of 
a  covenant  in  which  the  parties  lick  one  another's  blood. 
]5ut  we  have  seen  that  even  in  modern  times  the  use  of 
human  blood  in  covenants  is  not  unknown  to  the  Semites, 
and  the  same  thing  appears  for  very  early  times  from 
Herodotus's  account  of  the  form  of  covenant  used  bv  llie 
Arabs  on  the  bortlers  of  Egypt.'^  Blood  was  drawn  with 
a  sharp  stone  from  the  thumbs  of  each  party,  and  smeared 
on  seven  sacred  stones  with  invocation  of  the  gods.  The 
smearing  makes  the  gods  parties  to  the  covenant,  but 
evidently  the  symbolical  act  is  not  complete  unless  at  the 
same  time  the  human  parties  taste  each  other's  blood.  It 
is  probable  that  this  was  actually  done,  though  Herodotus 
does  not  say  so.  But  it  is  also  possible  that  in  course  of 
time  the  ritual  had  been  so  far  modified  that  it  was  deemed 
sufficient  that  the  two  bloods  should  meet  on  the  sacred 
stone.^  The  rite  described  by  Herodotus  has  for  its  object 
the  admission  of  an  individual  stranger  ^  to  fellowship  with 
an  Arab  clansman  and  his  kin  ;  the  compact  is  primarily 
between  two  individuals,  but  the  obligation  contracted  by 
the  single  clansman  is  binding  on  all  his  "  friends,"  i.e. 
on  the  other  members  of  the  kin.  The  reason  why  it  is  so 
binding  is  that  he  who  has  drunk  a  clansman's  blood  is  no 
longer  a  stranger  but  a  brother,  and  included  in  the  mystic 
circle  of  those  who  have  a  share  in  the  life-blood  that  is 
common  to  all  the  clan.      Primarily  the  covenant  is  not  a 

'  Matt.  XXV.  23.  "^  Herod.,  iii.  8. 

^  Some  further  remarks  on  the  various  modifications  of  covenant  cere- 
monies among  the  Semites  will  lie  found  in  Additional  No'e  I. 

■*  The  ceremony  might  also  take  jilace  between  an  Arab  and  his  "towns- 
man" (ccvTcs),  which,  I  apprehend,  must  mean  another  Arab,  but  one  of  a 
different  clan.  For  if  a  special  contract  between  two  clansmen  were  meant, 
there  would  be  no  menning  in  the  introduction  to  the  "  friends  "  who  agree 
to  share  the  covenant  obligation. 


298  THE    BLOOD 


LECT.   IX. 


special  engagement  to  this  or  that  particular  effect,  but  a 
bond  of  troth  and  life-fellowsliip  to  all  the  effects  for  which 
kinsmen  are  permanently  bound  together.  And  this  being 
so,  it  is  a  matter  of  course  that  the  engagement  has  a 
religious  side  as  well  as  a  social,  for  there  can  be  no 
brotherhood  without  community  of  sacra,  and  the  sanction 
of  brotherhood  is  the  jealousy  of  the  tribal  deity,  who 
sedulously  protects  the  holiness  of  kindred  blood.  This 
thouglit  is  expressed  symbolically  by  the  smearing  of  the 
two  bloods,  which  have  now  become  one,  upon  the  sacred 
stones,  which  is  as  much  as  to  say  that  the  god  himself  is 
a  third  blood-licker,  and  a  member  of  the  bond  of  brother- 
hood.^ It  is  transparent  that  in  ancient  times  the  deity 
so  brought  into  the  compact  must  have  been  the  kindred 
god  of  the  clan  to  which  the  stranger  was  admitted ;  but 
even  in  the  days  of  Herodotus  the  old  clan  relio-ion  had 
already  been  in  great  measure  broken  down ;  all  the  Arabs 
of  the  Egyptian  frontier,  whatever  their  clan,  worshipped 
the  same  pair  of  deities,  Orotal  and  Alilat  (Al-Lat),  and 
these  were  the  gods  invoked  in  the  covenant  ceremony. 
If  therefore  both  the  contracting  parties  were  Arabs,  of 
different  clans  but  of  the  same  region,  neither  could  feel 
that  the  covenant  introduced  him  to  the  sacra  of  a  new 
god,  and  the  religious  meaning  of  the  ceremony  would 
simply  be  that  the  gods  whom  both  adored  took  the 
compact  under  their  protection.  This  is  the  ordinary 
sense  of  covenant  with  sacrifice  in  later  times,  e.g.  among 
the  Hebrews,  but  also  among  the  Arabs,  where  the  deity 
invoked  is  ordinarily  Allah  at  the  Caaba  or  some  other 
great  deity  of  more  than  tribal  consideration.  But  that 
the  appeal  to  a  god  already  acknowledged  by  both  parties 

*  Compare  the  blood  covenant  wliiuh  a  Mosquito  Indian  used  to  form  with 
the  animal  kind  he   chose  as  his  protectors;   Bancroft,  i.   740  sq.   (Frazer, 

p.  r.f.). 


LECT.  ix.  COVENANT.  200 

is  a  departure  from  the  original  sense  of  the  rite  is 
apparent  from  the  application  of  the  blood,  not  only  to  the 
human  contractors,  but  to  the  altar  or  sacred  stone,  which 
continued  to  l)e  an  invariable  feature  in  covenant  sacrifice; 
for  this  part  of  the  rite,  as  we  have  just  seen,  has  its  full 
and  natural  meaning  only  in  a  ceremony  of  initiation, 
where  the  new  tribesman  has  to  be  introduced  to  the  god 
for  the  first  time  and  brought  into  life-fellowship  with  him, 
or  else  in  a  periodical  clan  sacrifice  held  for  the  purpose  of 
refreshing  and  renewing  a  bond  between  the  tribesmen  and 
their  god,  which  by  lapse  of  time  may  seem  to  have  been 
worn  out. 

In  Herodotus  the  blood  of  the  covenant  is  that  of  the 
human  parties  ;  in  the  cases  known  from  Arabic  literature 
it  is  the  blood  of  an  animal  sacrifice.  At  first  sight  this 
seems  to  imply  a  progress  in  refinement  and  an  aversion 
to  taste  human  blood.  But  it  may  well  be  doubted 
whether  such  an  assumption  is  justified  by  the  social 
history  of  the  Arabs,^  and  we  have  already  seen  that  the 
primitive  form  of  the  l)lood  covenant  has  survived  into 
modern  times.  Uather,  I  think,  we  ought  to  consider  that 
the  ceremony  described  by  Herodotus  is  a  covenant  between 
individuals,  without  that  direct  participation  of  the  whole 
kin,  which,  even  in  the  time  of  Nilus,  many  centuries  later, 
was  essential  in  those  parts  of  Arabia  to  an  act  of  sacrifice 
involving  the  death  of  a  victim.  The  covenants  made  by 
sacrifice  are  generally  if  not  always  compacts  between 
whole  kins,  so  that  here  sacrifice  was  appropriate,  while  at 
the  same  time  a  larger  supply  of  blood  was  necessary  than 
could  well  be  obtained  without  slaughter.  That  the  blood 
of  an  animal  was  accepted  in  lieu  of  the  tribesmen's  own 
blood  is  generally  passed  over  by  modern  writers  without 

'  See  the  examples  of  cannilialism  ami  the  ihiukiiig  oi'  humau  blood  cited 
in  Kinship,  p.  284  a*/. 


100  COVENANT 


LECT.   IX. 


explanation.  But  an  explanation  is  certainly  required,  and 
is  fully  supplied  only  by  the  consideration  that,  the  victim 
being  itself  included  in  the  sacred  circle  of  the  kin,  whose 
life  was  to  be  communicated  to  the  new-comers,  its  blood 
served  in  all  respects  the  same  purpose  as  actual  man's 
blood  would  have  done.  On  this  view  the  rationale  of 
covenant  sacrifice  is  perfectly  transparent,  and  calls  for  no 
further  remark. 

I  do  not,  however,  believe  that  the  origin  of  sacrifice 
can  possibly  be  sought  in  the  covenant  between  whole 
kins — a  kind  of  compact  which  in  the  nature  of  things 
cannot  have  become  common  till  the  tribal  system  was 
weak,  and  which  in  primitive  times  was  probably  quite 
unknown.  Even  the  adoption  of  individuals  into  a  new 
clan,  so  that  they  renounced  their  old  kin  and  sacra,  is 
held  by  the  most  exact  students  of  early  legal  custom  to 
be,  comparatively  speaking,  a  modern  innovation  on  the 
rigid  rules  of  the  ancient  blood-fellowship ;  much  more, 
then,  must  this  be  true  of  the  adoption  or  fusion  of  whole 
clans.  I  apprehend,  therefore,  that  the  use  of  blood  drawn 
from  a  living  man  for  the  initiation  of  an  individual  into 
new  sacra,  and  the  use  of  the  blood  of  a  victim  for  the 
similar  initiation  of  a  whole  clan,  must  both  rest  in  the 
last  resort  on  practices  that  were  originally  observed 
within  the  bosom  of  a  sinojle  kin. 

To  such  sacrifice  the  idea  of  a  covenant,  whether  between 
the  worshippers  mutually  or  between  the  worshippers  and 
their  god,  is  not  applicable,  for  a  covenant  means  artificial 
brotherhood,  and  has  no  place  where  the  natural  brother- 
hood of  which  it  is  an  imitation  already  subsists.  The 
Hebrews,  indeed,  who  had  risen  above  the  conception 
that  the  relation  between  Jehovah  and  Israel  was  that 
of  natural  kinship,  thought  of  the  national  religion  as 
constituted  by  a  formal  covenant-sacrifice  at  Mount  Sinai, 


LECT.  IX.  SACRIFICE.  301 

where  the  blood  of  the  victims  was  applied  to  the  altar 
on  the  one  hand,  and  to  the  people  on  the  other/  or  even 
by  a  still  earlier  covenant  rite  in  which  the  parties  were 
Jehovah  and  Abraham.^  And  by  a  further  development 
of  the  same  idea,  every  sacrifice  is  regarded  in  Ps.  1.  5 
as  a  covenant  between  God  and  the  worshipper.^  But  in 
purely  natural  religions,  where  the  god  and  his  community 
are  looked  upon  as  forming  a  physical  unity,  the  idea  that 
religion  rests  on  a  compact  is  out  of  place,  and  acts  of 
religious  communion  can  only  be  directed  to  quicken  and 
confirm  the  life  -  bond  that  already  subsists  between  the 
parties.  Some  provision  of  this  sort  may  well  seem  to  be 
necessary  where  kinship  is  conceived  in  the  very  realistic 
way  of  which  we  have  had  so  many  illustrations.  Physical 
unity  of  life,  regarded  as  an  actual  participation  in  one 
common  mass  of  flesh  and  blood,  is  obviously  subject  to 
modification  by  every  accident  that  affects  the  physical 
system,  and  especially  by  anything  that  concerns  the 
nourishment  of  the  body  and  the  blood.  On  this  ground 
alone  it  might  well  seem  reasonable  to  reinforce  the  sacred 
life  from  time  to  time  by  a  physical  process.  And  this 
merely  material  line  of  thought  naturally  combines  itself 
with   considerations  of   another  kind,  which    contain    the 

^  Ex.  xxiv.  4  sqq.  -  Gen.  xv.  8  sqq. 

'  That  Jeliovah's  relation  to  Israel  is  not  natural  but  ethical,  is  the  doctrine 
of  the  prophets,  and  is  emphasised,  in  dependence  on  their  teachinfj,  in  the 
Hook  of  Deuteiononiy.  But  the  passages  cited  show  tliat  the  idea  lias  its 
foundation  in  pre-prophetic  times  ;  and  indeed  the  prophets,  though  they 
give  it  fresh  and  powerful  application,  plaiidy  do  not  regard  the  concejition 
as  an  innovation.  In  fact,  a  nation  like  Israel  is  not  a  natural  unity  like  a 
clan,  and  Jehovah  as  the  national  God  was,  from  the  time  of  Moses  down- 
ward, no  mere  natural  clan  god,  hut  the  god  of  a  confederation,  so  that  here 
the  idea  of  a  covenant  religion  is  entirely  justified.  The  worship  of  Jehovah 
throughout  all  the  tribes  of  Israel  and  Judah  is  probably  older  than  the 
genealogical  system  that  derives  all  the  Hebrews  from  one  natural  parent ; 
cf.  Kinship,  p.  257.  Mohammed's  conception  of  heathen  religion  as  resting 
on  alliance  (Wellh.,  p.  123)  is  also  to  be  explained  by  the  fact  that  the 
great  gods  of  Arabia  in  bis  time  were  not  the  gods  of  single  clans. 


302  OFFEEINGS   OF  lect.  ix. 

germ  of  an  ethical  idea.  If  the  physical  oneness  of  the 
deity  and  his  community  is  impaired  or  attenuated,  the 
help  of  the  god  can  no  longer  be  confidently  looked  for. 
And  conversely,  when  famine,  plague  or  other  disaster 
shows  that  the  god  is  no  longer  active  on  behalf  of  his 
own,  it  is  natural  to  infer  that  the  bond  of  kinship  with 
liim  has  been  broken  or  rela.Ked,  and  that  it  is  necessary 
to  retie  it  by  a  solemn  ceremony,  in  which  the  sacred  life 
is  again  distributed  to  every  member  of  the  community. 
From  this  point  of  view  the  sacramental  rite  is  also  an 
atoning  rite,  which  brings  the  community  again  into 
harmony  with  its  alienated  god,  and  the  idea  of  sacrificial 
communion  includes  within  it  the  rudimentary  conception 
of  a  piacular  ceremony.  In  all  the  older  forms  of  Semitic 
ritual  the  notions  of  communion  and  atonement  are  bound 
up  together,  atonement  being  simply  an  act  of  com- 
munion designed  to  wipe  out  all  memory  of  previous 
estranoement. 

The  actual  working  of  these  ideas  may  be  seen  in  two 
different  groups  of  ritual  observance.  AVhere  the  whole 
community  is  involv^ed,  the  act  of  communion  and  atone- 
ment takes  the  shape  of  sacrifice.  But,  besides  this 
communal  act,  we  find  what  may  be  called  private  acts 
of  worship,  in  which  an  individual  seeks  to  establish  a 
physical  link  of  union  between  himself  and  the  deity, 
apart  from  the  sacrifice  of  a  victim,  either  by  the  use  of 
his  own  blood  in  a  rite  analogous  to  the  blood  covenant 
between  private  individuals,  or  by  other  acts  involvino- 
an  identical  principle.  Observances  of  this  kind  are 
peculiarly  instructive,  because  they  exhibit  in  a  simple 
form  the  same  ideas  that  lie  at  the  root  of  the  complex 
system  of  ancient  sacrifice ;  and  it  will  be  jDrofitable  to 
devote  some  attention  to  them  before  we  proceed  further 
with  the  subject  of  sacrifice  proper.     By  so  doing  we  shall 


LECT.  IX.  one's  own  blood.  ;;03 

indeed  be  carried  into  a  considerable  digi^ession,  but  I  hope 
that  we  shall  return  to  our  main  subject  vvitli  a  firmer 
grasp  of  the  fundamental  ])rinciples  involved/ 

In  the  ritual  of  the  Semites  and  other  nations,  Ixdh 
ancient  and  modern,  we  find  many  cases  in  which  ilio 
worshipper  sheds  his  own  blood  at  the  altar,  as  a  means  uf 
recommending  himself  and  his  prayers  to  the  deity.''  A 
classical  instance  is  that  of  the  priests  of  Baal  at  tlie 
contest  between  the  god  of  Tyre  and  the  God  of  Israel 
(1  Kings  xviii.  28).  Similarly  at  the  feast  of  the  Syrian 
goddess  at  Mabbog,  the  Galli  and  devotees  made  gashes  in 
their  arms,  or  offered  their  backs  to  one  another  to  beat," 
exactly  as  is  now  done  by  Persian  devotees  at  the  annual 
commemoration  of  the  martyrdom  of  Hasan  and  Hosain.'* 
I  have  elsewhere  argued  that  tlie  general  diffusion  of 
this  usage  among  the  Aramaeans  is  attested  by  the  Syriac 
word  cthl-ashshaf,  "  make  supplication,"  literally  "  cut 
oneself."  ^ 

The  current  view  about  such  rites  in  modern  as  in 
ancient  times  has  been  that  the  effusion  of  blood  without 
taking  away  life  is  a  substitute  for  human  sacrifice,*'  an 
explanation  which  recommends  itself  by  its  simplicity,  and 

'  For  tlie  &ulijoct  discussed  in  the  following  paragiaplis,  compare  especially 
the  copious  collection  of  materials  by  Dr.  G.  A.  AVilken,  Utbtr  das 
Haaropfer,  etc.,  Amsterdam,  18S6-7. 

=*  Cf.  Spencer,  Leg.  Hit.  Heb.  ii.  1.3.  2.  ^  Dea  Syria,  ]. 

*  This  seems  to  be  a  modern  survival  of  the  old  rites  of  Anaitis-worship, 
for  the  similar  observances  in  the  worship  of  Bellona  at  Rome  under  the 
empire  were  borrowed  from  Cajjpiidocia,  and  ajijian  iitly  from  a  form  of  tho 
cult  of  Anaitis  (see  the  refs.  in  Rij.scher,  •«.?•.).  The  latter,  again,  was  closely 
akin  to  the  worship  of  the  Syrian  goddess,  and  appears  to  liave  been 
developed  to  a  great  extent  under  Semitic  inlluence.  See  my  paper  on 
"Ctesias  and  the  Semiramis  Legend,"  English  //^s^  Ixer.,  April  1887. 

•'•  Journ.  Phil.  xiv.  125  ;  cf.  Niildeke  in  ZDMG.  xl.  723. 

*  See  Pausanias,  iii.  16.  10,  where  this  is  the  account  given  of  the  bloody 
flagellation  of  the  Spartan  ephebi  at  the  altar  of  Artemis  Orthia.  Similarly 
Euripitles,  Iph.  Taur.  1458  sqq.;  cf.  also  Bourke,  Snake  Dance  of  the  Zuni.i, 
p.  196  ;  and  especially  Wilken,  op.  cit.  p.  68  sqq. 


304  OFFERINGS   OF  le(^t.  ix. 

probably  hits  the  truth  with  regard  to  certain  cases.  But 
as  a  general  explanation  of  the  offering  of  his  own  blood 
by  a  suppliant,  it  is  not  quite  satisfactory.  Human 
sacrifice  is  offered  not  on  behoof  of  the  victim,  but  at  the 
expense  of  the  victim  on  behoof  of  the  sacrificing  com- 
munity, while  the  shedding  of  one's  own  blood  is  in  many 
cases  a  means  of  recommending  oneself  to  the  godhead. 
Further,  there  is  an  extensive  class  of  rites  prevalent 
among  savage  and  barbarous  peoples  in  which  blood- 
shedding  forms  part  of  an  initiatory  ceremony,  by  which 
youths,  at  or  after  the  age  of  puberty,  are  admitted  to 
the  status  of  a  man,  and  to  a  full  share  in  the  social 
privileges  and  sacra  of  the  community.  In  both  cases 
the  object  of  the  ceremony  must  be  to  tie,  or  to  confirm, 
a  blood-bond  between  the  worshipper  and  the  god  by  a 
means  more  potent  than  the  ordinary  forms  of  stroking, 
embracing  or  kissing  the  sacred  stone.  To  this  effect  the 
blood  of  the  man  is  shed  at  the  altar,  or  applied  to  the 
image  of  the  god,  and  has  exactly  the  same  efficacy  as  in 
the  forms  of  blood  covenant  that  have  been  already 
discussed.^  And  that  this  is  so  receives  strong  confirma- 
tion from  the  identical  practices  observed  among  so  many 
nations  in  mourning  for  deceased  kinsmen.  The  Hebrew 
law  forbade  mourners  to  gash  or  puncture  themselves  in 
honour  of  the  dead,^  evidently  associating  this  practice, 
which  nevertheless  was  common  down  to  the  close  of  the 
old  kingdom,"'  with   heathenish    rites.      Among  the  Arabs 

1  That  the  blood  must  fall  on  the  altar,  or  at  its  foot,  is  expressly  attested 
in  certain  cases,  e.(j.  in  the  Spartan  worship  of  Artemis  Orthia,  and  in 
various  Mexican  rites  of  the  same  kind ;  see  Sahagun,  Nouvelle  Espagne 
(French  Tr.  1880),  p.  185.  In  TibuUus's  account  of  Bellona  worship  (Lib. 
i.  El.  6,  vv.  45  sqq.)  the  blood  is  s[irinkled  on  the  idol  ;  the  church -fathers 
add  that  those  who  shared  in  the  rite  drank  one  another's  blood. 

=*  Lev.  xix.  28,  xxi.  5  ;  Dcut.  xiv.  1. 

'  Jer.  xvi.  6.  The  funeral  feast  which  Jeremiah  mentions  in  tne  follow- 
in"  verse  (see  the  Revised  Version,  and  compare  Hos.  ix.  4),  and  which  has 


LECT.  IX.  one's  own  blood.  305 

in  like  manner,  as  among  the  Greeks  and  other  ancient 
nations,  it  was  customary  in  mourning  to  scratch  the  face 
to  the  effusion  of  blood.^  The  original  meaning  of  this 
practice  appears  in  the  form  which  it  has  retained 
among  certain  rude  nations.  In  New  South  "Wales, 
"  several  men  stand  by  the  open  grave  and  cut  each 
other's  heads  with  a  boomerang,  and  hold  tlieir  heads 
over  the  grave  so  that  the  blood  from  the  wound  falls  on 
the  corpse."  ^  Similarly  in  Otaheite  the  blood  as  well  as 
the  tears  shed  in  mourning  were  received  on  pieces  of 
linen,  which  were  thrown  on  the  bier.^  Here  the  applica- 
tion of  blood  and  tears  to  the  dead  is  a  pledge  of  enduring 
affection ;  and  in  Australia  the  ceremony  is  completed  by 
cutting  a  piece  of  flesh  from  the  corpse,  which  is  dried, 
cut  up  and  distributed  among  the  relatives  and  friends 
of  the  deceased ;  some  suck  their  portion  "  to  get  strength 
and  courage."  The  two-sided  nature  of  the  rite  in  this 
case  puts  it  beyond  question  that  the  object  is  to  make  an 
enduring  covenant  with  the  dead. 

Among  the  Hebrews  and  Arabs,  and  indeed  among 
many  other  peoples  both  ancient  and  modern,  the  lacera- 
tion of  the  flesh  in  mourning  is  associated  with  the  practice 
of  shaving  the  head  or   cutting   off  part  of  the  hair  and 


for  its  object  to  comfort  the  mourners,  is,  I  apprehend,  in  its  origin  a  feast  of 
communion  with  the  dead  ;  of.  Tylor,  Primitive  Culture,  ii.  26  sqq.  This 
act  of  communion  consoles  the  survivors  ;  but  in  the  oldest  times  the 
consolation  has  a  physical  basis  ;  thus  the  Arabian  aolwdn,  or  draught  that 
makes  the  mourner  forget  his  grief,  consists  of  water  with  which  is  mingled 
dust  from  the  grave  (Wellh.,  p.  142),  a  form  of  communion  precisely 
similar  in  principle  to  the  Australian  usage  of  eating  a  small  piece  of 
the  corpse. 

1  Wellh.,  p.  160,  gives  the  necessary  citations.  Cf.  on  the  rites  of 
mourning  in  general,  Bokhari,  ii.  75  aq.,  and  Freytag  in  his  Latin  version 
of  the  Hamdsa,  i.  430  sq. 

^  F.  Bonney  in  Joum.  Anthrop.  Inst.  xiii.  (1884),  p.  134.  For  this  and 
the  following  reference  I  am  indebted  to  my  friend  Frazer. 

3  Cook's  First  Voyage,  Bk.  i.  ch.  19. 

U 


306  OFFERINGS  lect.  ix. 

depositing  it  in  the  tomb  or  on  the  funeral  p}Te.^  Here 
also  a  comparison  of  the  usage  of  more  primitive  races 
shews  that  the  rite  was  originally  two-sided,  and  had  exactly 
the  same  sense  as  the  offering  of  the  mourner's  blood. 
For  among  the  Australians  it  is  permitted  to  pull  some 
hair  from  the  corpse  in  lieu  of  a  part  of  its  flesh.  The 
hair,  in  fact,  is  regarded  by  primitive  peoples  as  a  living 
and  important  part  of  the  body,  and  as  such  is  the 
object  of  many  taboos  and  superstitions.^  Thus  when  the 
hair  of  the  living  is  deposited  with  the  dead,  and  the 
hair  of  the  dead  remains  with  the  living,  a  permanent 
bond  of  connection  unites  the  two, 

Now  among  the  Semites  and  other  ancient  peoples  the 
hair-offering  is  common,  not  only  in  mourning  but  in  the 

'  See  for  the  Arabs  (among  whom  the  practice  was  confined  to  women) 
the  authorities  referred  to  above;  also  Krehl,  Rel.  der  Arab&r,  p.  33,  and 
Goldziher,  Mxih.  Stud.  i.  248  ;  note  also  the  epithet  haldc  =  hdlica, 
"  death."  For  the  Hebrews — whose  custom  was  not  to  shave  the  whole  head 
but  only  the  front  of  it — see  Jer.  xvi.  6  ;  Amos  viii.  10  ;  Ezek.  vii.  18  ; 
and  the  legal  prohibitions  Lev.  xix.  27  ;  Deut.  xiv.  1  ;  cf.  also  Lev.  xxi. 
5  ;  Ezek.  xliv.  20.  In  the  Hebrew  case  it  is  not  expressly  said  that  the 
hair  was  laid  on  the  tomb,  but  in  Arabia  this  was  done  in  the  times  of 
heathenism,  and  is  still  done  by  some  Bedouin  tribes,  according  to  the 
testimony  of  modern  travellers.  A  notable  feature  in  the  Arabian  custom 
is  that  after  shaving  her  head  the  mourner  wrapped  it  in  the  sicdb,  a  cloth 
stained  with  her  own  blood.  See  the  verse  ascribed  to  the  poetess  Al- 
Khansa  in  Tclj,  s.v. 

'^  Em.  Brit,  article  "Taboo."  Wilken  {op.  cit.  p.  78  sqq.,  and  "De 
Simsonsage,"  Gids,  1888,  No.  5)  has  collected  many  instances  to  shew  that 
the  hair  is  often  regarded  as  the  special  seat  of  life  and  strength.  It  may 
be  conjectured  tliat  this  idea  is  connected  with  the  fact  that  the  hair 
continues  to  grow,  and  so  to  manifest  life,  even  in  mature  age,  and  this 
conjecture  is  supported  by  the  fact  that  the  nails  are  among  many  peoples 
the  object  of  similar  superstitious  regard.  The  practice  of  cutting  off  the 
hair  of  the  dead,  or  a  part  of  it,  is  pretty  widely  diffused  ;  see  Wilken, 
Haaropfer,  p.  74,  and  for  the  Arabs  an  isolated  statement  of  a  Mahuby 
Arab  in  Doughty,  i.  450,  to  which  Mr.  Doughty  does  not  appear  to  attach 
much  weight.  Yet  it  seems  to  me  that  a  custom  of  cutting  off  the  hair  of 
the  dead  is  implied,  when  we  read  that  the  Bckrites  before  the  desperate 
battle  of  Cidda  shaved  their  heads  as  devoting  themselves  to  death  [Havi. 
253,  1.  17).  Wilken  supposes  that  the  hair  was  originally  cut  away  from 
the  corpse,  or  from  the  dying  man,  to  facilitate  the  escape  of  the  soul  from 


LECT.    IX. 


OF   HAIR.  307 


worship  of  the  gods,  and  the  details  of  the  ritual  in  the 
two  cases  are  so  exactly  similar  that  we  cannot  doubt  that 
a  single  principle  is  involved  in  both.  The  hair  of  Achilles 
was  dedicated  to  the  river-god  Spercheus,  in  whose  honour 
it  was  to  be  shorn  on  his  safe  return  from  Troy ;  Ijut 
knowing  that  he  should  never  return,  the  hero  transferred 
the  offering  to  the  dead  Patroclus,  and  laid  his  yellow  locks 
in  the  hand  of  the  corpse.  Arab  women  laid  their  hair 
on  the  tomb  of  the  dead ;  young  men  and  maidens  in 
Syria  cut  off  their  flowing  tresses  and  deposited  them  in 
caskets  of  gold  and  silver  in  the  temples.^  The  Hebrews 
shaved  the  forepart  of  the  head  in  mourning;  the 
Arabs  of  Herodotus  habitually  adopted  a  like  tonsure  in 
honour  of  their  god  Orotal,  who  was  supposed  to  wear 
his  hair  in  the  same  way.^     To  argue  from  these  parallels 

the  body.  This  notion  might  very  well  recommend  itself  to  the  savage 
mind,  inasmuch  as  the  hair  continues  to  grow  for  some  time  after  death. 
But  when  \vc  find  the  hair  of  the  dead  used  as  a  means  of  divination,  or  as  a 
charm,  as  is  done  among  many  peoples  (Wilken,  Ilaarojiftr,  Anh.  ii. ),  we 
arc  led  to  think  that  the  main  object  in  cutting  it  off  must  be  to  preserve 
it  as  a  means  of  continued  connection  with  tlie  dead.  The  ]iossession  of  hair 
from  a  man's  head  or  of  a  shaving  from  his  nails  is,  in  primitive  magic,  a 
potent  means  of  getting  and  retaining  a  hold  over  him.  This,  I  suppose, 
is  the  reason  why  an  Arab  before  releasing  a  caiitive  cut  otT  his  hair  and 
put  it  in  his  quiver  ;  see  the  authorities  cited  by  Wilken,  p.  Ill,  and  add 
Rasmussen,  Addit.  p.  70  sq.  On  the  same  princijile  Mohammed's  hair  was 
preserved  by  his  followers  and  worn  on  their  persons  {Muh.  in  Med.  429). 
One  such  hair  is  the  famous  relic  in  the  mosque  of  the  Companion  at 
Cairawan. 

1  Dea  Syria,  Ix.,  where  modern  editors,  by  a  totally  inadmissible  con- 
jecture, make  it  appear  that  maidens  offered  their  locks,  and  youths  only 
their  beard.  Cf.  Ephraem  Syrus,  Op.  Syr.  i.  246  ;  the  Syriac  version  of 
Lev.  xix.  27  renders  "  ye  shall  not  let  your  hair  grow  long,"  and  Ephraem 
explains  that  it  was  the  custom  of  the  heathen  to  let  their  hair  grow  for  a 
certain  time,  and  then  on  a  fixed  day  to  shave  the  head  in  a  temple  or  beside 
a  sacred  fountain. 

-  The  peculiar  Arab  tonsure  is  already  referred  to  in  Jer.  xxv.  23, 
K.V.  It  is  found  elsewhere  in  antiquit}',  e.g.  in  Eubcca  and  in  some  parts 
of  Asia  Minor  {Iliad,  ii.  542  ;  Plut.,  Thes.  5  ;  Strabo,  x.  3.  6  ;  Chorilus  ap. 
Jos.,  c.  Ap.  i.  22  ;  Pollux,  ii.  28).  At  Delphi,  where  Greek  ephcbi  were 
wont  to  offer  the  long  hair  of  their  childhood,  this  peculiar  cut  was  called 
infnU,  for  Theseus  was  said  to  have  shorn  only  his  front  locks  at  the  temple. 


308  OFFERINGS  LECT.  ix. 

between  customs  of  mourning  and  of  religion  that  the 
worship  of  the  gods  is  based  on  the  cult  of  the  dead, 
would  be  to  go  beyond  the  evidence  ;  what  does  appear 
is  that  the  same  means  which  were  deemed  efficacious 
to  maintain  an  enduring  covenant  between  the  living 
and  the  dead  were  used  to  serve  the  religious  purpose 
of  binding  together  in  close  union  the  worshipper  and  his 
god. 

Starting  from  this  general  principle,  we  can  explain 
without  difficulty  the  two  main  varieties  of  the  hair- 
offering  as  it  occurs  in  religion.  In  its  nature  the 
offering  is  a  personal  one,  made  on  behalf  of  an  individual, 
not  of  a  community.  It  does  not  therefore  naturally 
find  a  place  in  the  stated  and  periodical  exercises  of 
local  or  tribal  religion,  where  a  group  of  men  is  gathered 
together  in  an  ordinary  act  of  communal  worship.  Its 
proper  object  is  to  create  or  to  emphasise  the  relation 
between  an  individual  and  a  god,  and  so  it  is  in  place 
either  in  ceremonies  of  initiation,  by  which  a  new  member 
is  incorporated  into  the  circle  of  a  particular  religion,  or 
in  connection  with  special  vows  and  special  acts  of  devo- 
tion, by  which  a  worshipper  seeks  to  knit  more  closely 
the  bond  between  himself  and  his  god.  Thus  in  Greek 
religion  the  hair-offering  occurs  either  at  the  moment  when 
a  youth  enters  on  manhood,  and  so  takes  up  a  full  share 
in  the  religious  as  well  as  the  political  responsibilities  of 
a  citizen,  or  else  in  fulfilment  of  a  vow  made  at  some 
moment  when  a  man  is  in  special  need  of  divine  succour. 
The  same  thing  is  true  of  Semitic  religion,  but  to  make 
this  clear  requires  some  explanation. 


Among  the  Curetes  this  was  the  way  in  which  warriors  wore  their  hair ; 
presumably,  therefore,  children  let  the  front  locks  grow  long,  and  sacrificed 
them  on  entering  manhood,  just  as  among  the  Arabs  the  two  aide  locks  are 
the  distinguishing  mark  of  an  immature  lad. 


LECT.  IX.  OF  HAIR.  309 


In  early  societies  a  man's  religion  is  determined  by  his 
birth,  for  he  is  destined  from  his  birth  to  become  a 
member  of  a  particular  political  and  social  circle,  which 
is  at  the  same  time  a  distinct  religious  community.  ])ut 
in  many  cases,  jjerhaps  in  most,  this  destination  has  to  be 
confirmed  by  a  formal  act  of  admission  to  the  community. 
The  child  or  immature  stripling  is  not  yet  a  full  member 
of  his  tribe  or  nation,  lie  has  not  yet  full  civil  privileges 
and  responsibilities,  and  in  general,  on  the  principle  that 
civil  and  religious  status  are  inseparal)le,  he  has  no  full 
part  either  in  the  rights  or  in  the  duties  of  the  communal 
religion.  He  is  excluded  from  many  religious  ceremonies, 
and  conversely  he  can  do  without  offence  things  which  on 
religious  grounds  are  strictly  forbidden  to  the  full  tribes- 
man. Anion*];  rude  nations  the  transition  from  civil  and 
religious  immaturity  to  maturity  is  frequently  preceded 
by  certain  probationary  tests  of  courage  and  endurance  ; 
for  the  full  tribesman  must  above  all  things  be  a  warrior. 
In  any  case  the  step  from  childhood  to  manhood  is  too  im- 
portant to  take  place  without  a  formal  ceremony,  and  public 
rites  of  initiation,  importing  the  full  and  final  incorporation 
of  the  neophyte  into  the  civil  and  religious  fellowship 
of  his  tribe  or  community.^  It  is  clear  from  what  has 
already  been  said  that  the  application  of  the  blood  of  the 
youth  to  the  sacred  symbol,  or  the  depositing  of  his  hair 
at  the  shrine  of  his  people's  god,  is  a  fitting  and  significant 
feature  in  such  a  ritual ;  and  among  very  many  rude 
peoples  one  or  other  of  these  ceremonies  is  actually 
observed  in  connection  with  the  rites  which  every  young 
man  must  pass  through  before  he  attains  the  position  of  a 
warrior,  and  is  allowed  to  marry  and  exercise  the  other 

^  In  some  cases  tlie  rite  seems  to  be  connected  witli  the  transference  of 
the  lad  from  the  mother's  to  the  father's  kin.  But  for  the  present  argu- 
ment, it  is  not  necessary  to  discuss  this  aspect  of  the  matter. 


310  INITIATORY  LECT.  IX. 


prerogatives  of  perfect  manhood.  Among  wholly  barbar- 
ous races  these  initiation  ceremonies  have  a  very  great 
importance,  and  are  often  extremely  repulsive  in  character. 
The  blood-offering  in  particular  frequently  takes  a  form 
which  makes  it  a  severe  test  of  the  neophyte's  courage — 
as  in  the  cruel  flagellation  of  Spartan  ephebi  at  the  altar 
of  Artemis  Orthia,  or  in  the  frightful  ordeal  which  takes 
the  place  of  simple  circumcision  in  some  of  the  wilder 
mountain  tribes  of  Arabia.^  As  manners  become  less 
fierce,  and  society  ceases  to  be  organised  mainly  for  war, 
the  ferocity  of  primitive  ritual  is  naturally  softened,  and 
the  initiation  ceremony  gradually  loses  importance,  and 
ultimately  becomes  a  mere  domestic  celebration,  which  in 
its  social  aspect  may  be  compared  to  the  private  festivities 
of  a  modern  family  when  a  son  comes  of  age,  and  in  its 
religious  aspect  to  the  first  communion  of  a  youthful 
Catholic.  When  the  rite  loses  political  significance,  and 
becomes  purely  religious,  it  is  not  necessary  that  it  should 
be  deferred  to  the  age  of  full  manhood ;  indeed  the  natural 
tendency  of  pious  parents  will  be  to  dedicate  their  child 
as  early  as  possible  to  the  god  who  is  to  be  his  protector 
through  life.  Thus  circumcision,  which,  as  will  be  shewn 
hereafter,  was  originally  a  preliminary  to  marriage,  and  so  a 
ceremony  of  introduction  to  the  full  prerogative  of  manhood, 
is  now  generally  undergone  by  Mohammedan  boys  before 
they  reach  maturity,  while,  among  the  Hebrews,  infants  were 
circumcised  on  the  eighth  day  from  birth.  Similar  varia- 
tions of  usage  apply  to  the  Semitic  hair-offering.  Among 
the  Arabs  in  the  time  of  Mohammed  it  was  common  to 
sacrifice  a  sheep  on  the  birth  of  a  child,  and  then  to  shave 
the  head  of  the  infant  and  daub  the  scalp  with  the  blood  of 
the  victim.      This  ceremony — called  'acica,  or  "  the  cutting 

^  The  connection  between  circumcision  and  the  initiatory  blood-offering 
will  be  considered  more  fully  in  another  place. 


i.F.CT.  IX.  HAIR-OFFERINGS.  311 


off  of  tlie  hair  " — was  designed  to  "  avert  evil  from  the 
child,"  and  was  evidently  an  act  of  dedication  by  which 
the  infant  was  brought  under  the  protection  of  the  god 
of  the  community.^  Among  Lucian's  Syrians,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  hair  of  boys  and  girls  was  allowed  to  grow 
unshorn  as  a  consecrated  thing  from  birth  to  adolescence, 
and  was  cut  off  and  dedicated  at  the  sanctuary  as  a  neces- 
sary preliminary  to  marriage.  In  other  words,  the  hair- 
offering  of  youths  and  maidens  was  a  ceremony  of  religious 
initiation,  through  which  they  had  to  pass  before  they  were 
admitted  to  the  status  of  social  maturity.  The  same  thing 
appears  to  have  occurred,  at  least  in  the  case  of  maidens, 
at  Phoenician  sanctuaries ;  for  the  female  worshippers  at 
the  Adonis  feast  of  Byblus,  who,  according  to  the  author 
just  cited,  were  required  to  sacrifice  either  their  hair  or 
their  chastity,^  appear  from  other  accounts  to  have  been 
generally    maidens,  of    whom    this    act    of    devotion   was 

^  That  the  hair  was  regarded  as  an  ofTering  appears  from  the  Jloslem 
practice,  referred  by  tradition  to  the  example  of  Fatima,  of  bestowing  in  alms 
its  weight  of  silver.  Alms  are  a  religious  oblation,  and  in  the  similar 
custom  which  Herod.,  ii.  65,  Diod.,  i.  83,  attest  for  ancient  Egypt,  the  silver 
was  paid  to  the  sanctuary.  See  for  further  details  Kbiship,  p.  152  sqq., 
where  I  have  dwelt  on  the  way  in  which  such  a  ceremony  would  facilitate 
the  change  of  the  child's  kin,  when  the  nile  that  the  son  followed  the 
father  and  not  the  mother  began  to  be  established.  I  still  think  that 
this  point  is  worthy  of  notice,  and  that  the  desire  to  lix  the  child's  re- 
ligion, and  with  it  his  tribal  connection,  at  the  earliest  possible  moment, 
may  have  been  one  cause  for  performing  the  ceremony  in  infancy.  But 
Noldeke's  remarks  in  ZDMG.  xl.  184,  and  a  fuller  consideration  of  the 
whole  subject  of  the  hair-offering,  have  convinced  me  that  the  name  'acica 
is  not  connected  with  the  idea  of  cliange  of  kin,  but  is  derived  from  the 
cutting  away  of  the  first  hair.  In  this,  however,  I  see  a  confirmation  of  the 
view  that  among  the  Arabs,  as  among  the  Syrians,  the  old  usage  was  to 
defer  the  cutting  of  the  first  hair  till  adolescence,  for  'area  is  a  very  strong 
term  to  apply  to  the  shaving  of  the  scanty  hair  of  a  new-born  infant,  whil'i 
it  is  quite  appropriate  to  the  sacrifice  of  the  long  locks  characteristic  of 
boyhood.  Cf.  also  the  use  of  the  same  verb  in  the  phrases  'occat  tami- 
viatuhu  {Kdmil,  405,  1.  19),  'acca'l-shabdhu  (dmlmati  {Tiij,  s.v.),  used  of 
the  cutting  away,  when  manhood  was  reached,  of  the  amulet  worn  during 
childhood. 

2  Dea  Syria,  vi. 


312  THE   HAIR-OFFERING  lect.  ix. 


exacted  as  a  preliminary  to  marriage.-^  I  apprehend  that 
among  the  Arabs,  in  like  manner,  the  'acica  was  originally 
a  ceremony  of  initiation  into  manhood,  and  that  the 
transference  of  the  ceremony  to  infancy  was  a  later  in- 
novation, for  among  the  Arabs,  as  among  the  Syrians, 
young  lads  let  their  hair  grow  long,  and  the  sign  of 
immaturity  was  the  retention  of  the  side  locks,  which 
adult  warriors  did  not  wear.'  The  cutting  of  the  side 
locks  was  therefore  a  formal  mark  of  admission  into  man- 
hood, and  in  the  time  of  Herodotus  it  must  also  have  been 
a  formal  initiation  into  the  worship  of  Orotal,  for  other- 
wise the  religious  significance  which  the  Greek  historian 
attaches  to  the  shorn  forehead  of  the  Arabs  is  unintelligible. 
At  that  time,  therefore,  we  must  conclude  that  a  hair- 
offering,  precisely  equivalent  to  the  'acica,  took  place  upon 
entry  into  manhood,  and  thereafter  the  front  hair  was 
habitually  worn  short  as  a  permanent  memorial  of  this 
dedicatory  sacrifice.  It  is  by  no  means  clear  that  even  in 
later  times  the  initiatory  ceremony  was  invariably  per- 
formed in  infancy,  for  the  name  'aclca,  which  in  Arabic 
denotes  the  first  hair  as  well  as  the  religious  ceremony  of 
cutting  it  off,  is  sometimes  applied  to  the  ruddy  locks  of  a 
lad  approaching  manhood,^  and  figuratively  to  the  plumage 
of  a  swift  young  ostrich  or  the  tufts  of  an  ass's  hair, 
neither  of  which  has  much  resemblance  to  the  scanty 
down  on  the  head  of  a  new-born  babe.^ 

It  would  seem,  therefore,  that  the  oldest  Semitic  usage, 
both  in  Arabia  and  in  Syria,  was  to  sacrifice  the  hair  of 

^  Sozomen,  v.  10.  7.  Cf.  Socrates,  i.  18,  and  the  similar  usage  in 
Babylon,  Herod.,  i.  199.  "We  are  not  to  suppose  that  participation  in 
these  rites  was  confined  to  maidens  before  marriage  (Euseb.,  Vit.  Const,  iii. 
58.  1),  but  it  appears  that  it  was  obligatory  on  them. 

^  SeeWe\\h.,Heid.  p.  119. 

^  Imraulcais,  3.  1  ;  see  also  Lisdn,  xii.  129,  1.  18,  and  Dozy,  s.v. 

*  Zohair,  1.  17;  Diw.  Hodh.  232.  9.  The  sense  of  "down,"  which 
Nbldeke,  ut  nupra,  gives  to  the  word  in  these  passages,  is  hardly  appropriate. 


LECT.  IX.  IN    LATER    LIFE.  313 

childhood  upon  admission  to  the  religious  and  social  status 
of  manhood. 

The  bond  between  the  worshipper  and  his  god  which 
was  established  by  means  of  the  hair -offering  had  an 
enduring  cliaracter,  but  it  was  natural  to  renew  it  from 
time  to  time,  when  there  was  any  reason  to  fear  that  the 
interest  of  the  deity  in  his  votary  might  have  been  relaxed. 
Thus  it  was  customary  for  the  inhabitants  of  Taif  in  Arabia 
to  shave  their  heads  at  the  sanctuary  of  the  town  whenever 
they  returned  from  a  journey.^  Here  the  idea  seems  to  be 
that  absence  from  the  holy  place  might  have  loosened  the 
religious  tie,  and  that  it  was  proper  to  bind  it  fast  again. 
In  like  manner  the  hair-offering  formed  part  of  the  ritual 
in  every  Arabian  pilgrimage,^  and  also  at  the  great  feasts 
of  Byblus  and  Bambyce,^  which  were  not  mere  local 
celebrations,  but  drew  worshippers  from  distant  parts. 
The  worshipper  in  these  cases  desired  to  attach  himself 
as  firmly  as  possible  to  a  deity  and  a  shrine  with  which 
he  could  not  hope  to  keep  up  frequent  and  regular  con- 
nection, and  thus  it  was  fitting  that,  when  he  went  forth 
from  the  holy  place,  he  should  leave  part  of  himself 
behind,  as  a  permanent  link  of  union  with  the  temple 
and  the  god  that  inhabited  it. 

The  Arabian  and  Syrian  pilgrimages  with  which  the 
hair-offering  was  associated  were  exceptional  services  ;  in 
many  cases  their  object  was  to  place  the  worshipper  under 
the  protection  of  a  foreign  god,  whose  cult  had  no  place  in 
the  pilgrim's  local  and  natural  religion,  and  in  any  case 

^  Muh.  in  Med.  p.  381. 

2  Wellh.,  p.  117  ;  Goldziher,  op.  cit.  p.  249.  That  the  hair  was  shaved 
as  an  offering  appeirs  most  clearly  in  the  worship  of  Ocaisir,  wliere  it  was 
mixed  with  an  oblation  of  meal, 

^  Dea  Syria,  vi.,  Iv.  In  tlie  latter  case  the  eyebrows  also  were  shaved, 
and  the  sacrifice  of  hair  from  the  eyebrow  reappears  in  Peru,  in  tlie  laws  of 
the  Incas.  On  the  painted  inscription  of  Citium  (C.  7.  S.  No.  86),  barbers 
(Q3^J)  are  enumerated  among  the  stated  ministers  of  the  temple. 


314  THE   HAIE-OFFERING  lect.  ix. 


the  service  was  not  part  of  a  man's  ordinary  religious 
duties,  but  was  spontaneously  undertaken  as  a  work  of 
special  piety,  or  under  the  pressure  of  circumstances  that 
made  the  pilgrim  feel  the  need  of  coming  into  closer 
touch  with  the  divine  powers.  Among  the  Hebrews,  at 
least  in  later  times,  when  stated  pilgrimages  to  Jerusalem 
were  among  the  ordinary  and  imperative  exercises  of 
every  man's  religion,  the  pilgrimage  did  not  involve  a  hair- 
offering,  nor  is  it  probable  that  in  any  part  of  antiquity 
this  form  of  service  was  required  in  connection  with 
ordinary  visits  to  one's  own  local  temple.  The  Penta- 
teuchal  law  recognises  the  hair-offering  only  in  the  case 
of  the  peculiar  vow  of  the  Nazarite,  the  ritual  of  which 
is  described  in  Num.  vi.  The  details  there  given  do 
not  help  us  to  understand  what  part  the  Nazarite  held 
in  the  actual  religious  life  of  the  Jews  under  the  law, 
but  from  Josephus  ^  we  gather  that  the  vow  was  generally 
taken  in  times  of  sickness  or  other  trouble,  and  that  it 
was  therefore  exactly  parallel  to  the  ordinary  Greek  vow 
to  offer  the  hair  on  deliverance  from  urgent  danger.  From 
the  antique  point  of  view  the  fact  that  a  man  is  in  straits 
or  peril  is  a  proof  that  the  divine  powers  on  which  his  life 
is  dependent  are  estranged  or  indifferent,  and  a  warning  to 
bring  himself  into  closer  relation  with  the  god  from  whom 
he  is  estranged.  The  hair- offering  affords  the  natural 
means  towards  this  end,  and  if  the  offering  cannot  be 
accomplished  at  the  moment,  it  ought  to  be  made  the 
subject  of  a  vow,  for  a  vow  is  the  recognised  way  of 
antedating  a  future  act  of  service  and  making  its  efficacy 
begin  at  once.  A  vow  of  this  kind,  aiming  at  the  redin- 
tegration of  normal  relations  with  the  deity,  is  naturally 
more  than  a  bare  promise ;  it  is  a  promise  for  the  per- 
formance   of   which    one   at   once   begins   to   make   active 

15. /.  ii.  15.  ]. 


LECT.   IX. 


IN  VOWS.  315 


preparation,  so  that  the  life  of  the  votary  from  the  time 
when  he  assumes  the  engagement  is  taken  out  of  the 
ordinary  sphere  of  secular  existence,  and  becomes  one 
continuous  act  of  religion.^  As  soon  as  a  man  takes 
the  vow  to  poll  his  locks  at  the  sanctuary,  the  hair  is  a 
consecrated  thing,  and  as  such  inviolable  till  the  moment 
for  disclmrging  the  vow  arrives ;  and  so  the  flowing  locks 
of  the  Hebrew  Nazarite  or  of  a  Greek  votary  like  Achilles 
are  the  visible  marks  of  his  consecration.  In  like  manner 
the  Arabian  pilgrim,  whose  resolution  to  visit  a  distant 
shrine  was  practically  a  vow,^  was  not  allowed  to  poll 
or  even  to  comb  and  wash  liis  locks  till  the  pilgrimage 
was  accomplished ;  and  on  the  same  principle  the  whole 
course  of  his  journey,  from  the  day  when  he  first  set  his 
face  towards  the  temple,  with  the  resolution  to  do  homage 
there,  was  a  period  of  consecration  (ihrdm),^  during  which 
he  was  subject  to  a  number  of  other  ceremonial  restrictions 
or  taboos,  of  the  same  kind  with  those  imposed  by  actual 
presence  in  the  sanctuary. 

The  taboos  connected  with  pilgrimages  and  other  vows 
require  some  further  elucidation,  but  to  go  into  the  matter 
now  would  carry  us  too  far  from  the  point  immediately 
before  us.  I  will  therefore  reserve  what  I  have  still  to  say 
on  this  subject  for  an  additional  note."*  What  has  been 
said  already  covers  all  the  main  examples  of  the  hair-offer- 
ing among  the  Semites.  They  present  considerable  variety 
of  aspect,  but  the  result  of  our  discussion  is  that  they  can 

1  Of  course  if  tlie  vow  is  conditional  on  something  to  happen  in  tlie  future, 
the  engagement  does  not  necessarily  come  into  force  till  the  condition  is 
fulfilled. 

-  In  Mohammedan  law  it  is  exi)ressly  reckoned  as  a  vow. 

*  Under  Islam  the  consecration  of  the  ]iilgrim  need  not  begin  till  he 
reaches  the  boundaries  of  the  sacred  territory.  But  it  is  permitted,  ami 
according  to  many  authorities  preferable,  to  assume  the  ihrCnn  on  leaving 
one's  home,  and  this  was  the  ancient  practice. 

*  See  Additional  Note  K.     The  Taboos  incident  to  Pifiji-imnges  ami  Vown. 


316  OFFERINGS   OF  lzct.  ix. 

be  referred  to  a  single  principle.  In  their  origin  the  hair- 
offering  and  the  offering  of  one's  own  blood  are  precisely 
similar  in  meaning.  But  the  blood  -  offering,  while  it 
presents  the  idea  of  life  union  with  the  god  in  the  strongest 
possible  form,  is  too  barbarous  to  be  long  retained  as  an 
ordinary  act  of  religion.  It  continued  to  be  practised, 
among  the  civilised  Semites,  by  certain  priesthoods  and 
societies  of  devotees  ;  but  in  the  habitual  worship  of  laymen 
it  either  fell  out  of  use  or  was  retained  only  in  a  very 
attenuated  form,  in  the  custom  of  tattooing  the  flesh  with 
punctures  in  honour  of  the  deity.^  The  hair-offering,  on 
the  other  hand,  which  involved  nothing  offensive  to  civilised 
feelings,  continued  to  play  an  important  part  in  religion  to 
the  close  of  paganism,  and  even  entered  into  Christian  ritual 
in  the  tonsure  of  priests  and  nuns.^ 

Closely  allied  to  the  practice  of  leaving  part  of  oneself 

^  For  the  o-r/y^aTa  On  the  wrists  and  necks  of  the  heathen  Syrians  tlie 
classical  passage  is  Dea  Syria,  lix.  ;  compare  for  farther  evidence  the  discus- 
sion in  Spencer,  Leg.  Bit.  Heb.  ii.  14  ;  and  see  also  Kiiiship,  p.  213  .sgg. 
The  tattooed  marks  were  the  sign  that  the  worshipper  belonged  to  the  god  ; 
thus  at  the  temple  of  Heracles  at  the  Canobic  mouth  of  the  Nile,  the  fugitive 
slave  who  had  been  marked  with  the  sacred  stigmata  could  not  be  reclaimed 
by  his  master  (Herod.,  ii.  113).  The  practice  therefore  stands  on  one  line 
with  the  branding  or  tattooing  of  cattle,  slaves  and  prisoners  of  war.  But  in 
Lev.  xix.  28,  where  tattooing  is  condemned  as  a  heathenish  practice,  it  is 
immediately  associated  with  incisions  in  the  flesh  made  in  mourning  or  in 
honour  of  the  dead,  and  this  suggests  that  in  their  ultimate  origin  the 
stvjmata  are  nothing  more  than  the  permanent  scars  of  punctures  made  to 
draw  blood  for  a  ceremony  of  self-dedication  to  the  deity.  Among  the  Arabs 
I  find  no  direct  evidence  of  a  religious  significance  attached  to  tattooing,  and 
the  practice  appears  to  have  been  confined  to  women,  as  was  also  the  habitual 
use  of  amulets  in  mature  life.  The  presumption  is  that  this  coincidence  is 
not  accidental,  but  that  the  tattooed  marks  were  originally  sacred  stigmata 
like  those  of  the  Syrians,  and  so  were  conceived  to  have  the  force  of  a  charm. 
I'ietro  della  Yalle  (ed.  1843),  i.  395,  describes  the  Arabian  tattooing,  and  says 
that  it  is  practised  all  over  the  East  by  men  as  well  as  by  women.  But  so 
far  as  I  have  observed,  it  is  only  Christian  men  that  tattoo  in  Syria,  and 
with  them  the  pattern  chosen  is  a  sacred  symbol,  whieli  has  been  sliovvn  to 
me  as  a  proof  that  a  man  was  exempt  from  the  militarj'^  service  to  which 
Moslems  are  liable. 

-  The  latter  was  practised  in  Jerome's  time  in  the  monasteries  of  Egyjit 
and  Syria  {Ep.  147  ad  Sabinianum). 


LECT.  ix.  CLOTHING    AND    RAGS.  317 

— whether  blood  or  hair — in  contact  with  the  god  at  the 
sanctuary,  are  offerings  of  part  of  one's  clothes  or  other 
things  that  one  has  worn,  such  as  ornaments  or  weapons. 
In  the  Iliad  Glaucus  and  Diomede  exchange  armour  in 
token  of  their  ancestral  friendship ;  and  when  Jonathan 
makes  a  covenant  of  love  and  brotherhood  with  David,  lie 
invests  him  with  his  garments,  even  to  his  sword,  his  bow, 
and  his  girdle.^  Among  the  Arabs  he  who  seeks  pro- 
tection lays  hold  of  the  garments  of  the  man  to  whom 
he  appeals,  or  more  formally  ties  a  knot  in  the  head- 
shawl  of  his  protector.'^  In  the  old  literature  "pluck 
away  my  garments  from  thine  "  means  "  put  an  end  to  our 
attachment."  ^  The  clothes  are  so  far  part  of  a  man  that 
they  can  serve  as  a  vehicle  of  personal  connection.  Hence 
the  religious  significance  of  suspending  on  an  idol  or 
Dhat  Anwai,  not  only  weapons,  ornaments  and  complete 
garments,  but  mere  shreds  from  one's  raiment.  These 
rag  -  offerings  are  still  to  be  seen  hanging  on  the  sacred 
trees  of  Syria  and  on  tlie  tombs  of  Mohammedan  saints  ; 
they  are  not  gifts  in  the  ordinary  sense,  but  pledges  of 
attachment.  In  all  probability  the  rending  of  garments  in 
mourning  was  originally  designed  to  procure  such  an  offer- 
ing for  the  dead,  just  as  the  tearing  of  the  hair  on  the  like 

^  1  Sam.  xviii.  3  sq.  I  presume  that  by  ancient  law  Saul  was  bound  to 
acknowledge  the  formal  covenant  thus  made  between  David  and  his  son,  and 
that  this  ought  to  be  taken  into  account  in  judging  of  the  subsequent 
relations  1»»Qje*a  the  three,  o  -^^  "^  V 

2  Wellhausen,  Heidenthum,  p.  105,  note  3  ;  Burckhardt,  Bed.  and  Wah, 
i.  130  sq.  ;  Blunt,  Bedouin  Tribes  of  the  Euphrates,  i.  42.  The  knot,  says 
Burckhardt,  is  tied  that  the  ju-otector  may  look  out  for  witnesses  to  prove 
the  act,  and  "the  same  custom  is  observed  when  any  transaction  is  to  be 
witnessed."  But  primarily,  I  apprehend,  the  knot  is  the  symbolic  sign  of 
the  engagement  that  the  witnesses  are  called  to  prove,  and  I  was  told  in  the 
Hijiiz  that  the  suppliant  gets  a  fragment  of  the  fringe  of  the  shawl  to  keep 
as  his  token  of  the  transaction.  In  the  covenant  sacrifice,  Herod.,  iii.  8,  the 
blood  is  applied  to  the  sacred  stones  with  threads  from  the  garments  of  the 
two  contracting  parties. 

3  Imraulc,  Moall.  I.  21. 


818  ATONING   FORCE  lect.  ix. 

occasion  is  not  a  natural  sign  of  mourning,  but  a  relic  of 
the  hair-offering.  Natural  signs  of  mourning  must  not  be 
postulated  lightly ;  in  all  such  matters  habit  is  a  second 
nature.^ 

Finally,  I  may  note  in  a  single  word  that  the  counter- 
part of  the  custom  of  leaving  part  of  oneself  or  of  one's 
clothes  with  the  deity  at  the  sanctuary,  is  the  custom  of 
wearing  sacred  relics  as  charms,  so  that  something  belong- 
ing to  the  god  remains  always  in  contact  with  one's 
person. 

The  peculiar  instructiveness  of  the  series  of  usages 
which  we  have  been  considering,  and  the  justification  for 
the  long  digression  from  the  subject  of  sacrifice  into  which 
they  have  led  us,  is  that  in  them  we  find  the  conception  of 
ceremonies,  designed  to  establish  a  life-bond  between  the 
worshipper  and  his  god,  dissociated  from  the  death  of  a 
victim  and  from  every  idea  of  penal  satisfaction  to  the 
deity.  They  have  indeed  an  atoning  force,  whenever  they 
are  used  to  renew  relations  with  a  god  who  is  temporarily 
estranged,  but  this  is  merely  a  consequence  of  the  concep- 
tion that  the  physical  link  which  they  establish  between 
the  divine  and  human  parties  in  the  rite  binds  the  god  to 
the  man  as  well  as  the  man  to  the  god.  Even  in  the  case 
of  the  blood-offering  there  is  no  reason  to  hold  that  the 
pain  of  the  self-inflicted  wounds  had  originally  any  signifi- 
cant place  in  the  ceremony.  But  no  doubt,  as  time  went 
on,  the  barbarous  and  painful  sacrifice  of  one's  own  blood 
came  to  be  regarded  as  more  efficacious  than  the  simpler 
and  commoner  hair-ofiering ;  for  in  religion  what  is  un- 
usual always  appears  to  be  more  potent,  and  more  fitted  to 
reconcile  an  offended  deity. 

^  It  is  to  be  noted  that  all  expressions  of  sorrow  and  distress  are  derived 
from  the  formal  usages  employed  in  primitive  times  in  mourning  for  the 
dead. 


LECT.  IX.  OF   BLOOD-OFFERINCS.  310 

The  use  of  the  Syriac  word  cthkashsJiaph  seems  to  show 
that  the  sacrifice  of  one's  own  blood  was  mainly  associated 
among  the  Aramteans  with  deprecation  or  supplication  to 
an  angry  god,  and  though  I  cannot  point  among  the  Semites 
to  any  formal  atoning  ceremony  devised  on  this  principle, 
the  idea  involved  can  be  well  illustrated  by  a  rite  still 
sometimes  practised  in  Arabia,  as  a  means  of  making  atone- 
ment to  a  man  for  offences  short  of  murder.  With  bare 
and  shaven  head  the  offender  appears  at  the  door  of  the 
injured  person,  holding  a  knife  in  each  hand,  and,  reciting  a 
formula  provided  for  the  purpose,  strikes  his  head  several 
times  with  the  sharp  blades.  Then  drawing  his  hands  over 
his  bloody  scalp,  he  wipes  them  on  the  doorpost.  The 
other  must  then  come  out  and  cover  the  suppliant's  head 
with  a  shawl,  after  which  he  kills  a  sheep,  and  they  sit 
down  together  at  a  feast  of  reconciliation.  The  character- 
istic point  in  this  rite  is  the  application  of  the  blood  to  the 
doorpost,  which,  as  in  the  passover  service,  or  in  the  Arabian 
custom  of  sprinkling  the  blood  of  a  sacrifice  on  the  tents 
of  a  host  going  out  to  battle,^  is  equivalent  to  applying  it 
to  the  person  of  the  inmates.  Here,  therefore,  we  still  see 
the  old  idea  at  work,  that  the  reconciling  value  of  the  rite 
lies,  not  in  the  self-inflicted  wounds,  but  in  the  application 
of  the  blood  to  make  a  life-bond  between  the  two  parties. 

On  the  same  analogy,  when  we  turn  to  those  blood- 
rites  in  which  a  whole  community  takes  part,  and  in  which 
therefore  a  victim  has  to  be  slaughtered  to  provide  the 
material  for  the  ceremony,  we  may  expect  to  find  tliat, 
at  least  in  old  times,  the  significant  part  of  the  ceremony 
does  not  lie  in  the  death  of  the  victim,  but  in  the  apj^li- 
cation  of  its  life  or  life-blood ;  and  in  this  expectation  we 
shall  not  be  disappointed. 

Of  all  Semitic  sacrifices  those  of  the  Arabs  have  the  rudest 

^  Wacidi,  ed.  Kremer,  p.  28,  1.  8. 


320  ARABIAN  LECT.  IX. 

and  most  visibly  primitive  character  ;  and  among  the  Arabs, 
where  there  was  no  complicated  fire-ceremony  at  the  altar, 
the  sacramental  meal  stands  out  in  full  relief  as  the  very 
essence  of  the  ritual.  Now  in  the  oldest  known  form  of 
Arabian  sacrifice,  as  described  by  Nilus,  the  camel  chosen 
as  the  victim  is  bound  upon  a  rude  altar  of  stones  piled 
tosether,  and  when  the  leader  of  the  band  has  thrice  led 
the  worshippers  round  the  altar  in  a  solemn  procession 
accompanied  with  chants,  he  inflicts  the  first  wound,  while 
the  last  words  of  the  hymn  are  still  upon  the  lips  of  the 
congregation,  and  in  all  haste  drinks  of  the  blood  that 
gushes  forth.  Forthwith  the  whole  company  fall  on  the 
victim  with  their  swords,  hacking  off  pieces  of  the  quiver- 
ing flesh  and  devouring  them  raw  with  such  wild  haste 
that,  in  the  short  interval  between  the  rise  of  the  day  star, 
which  marked  the  hour  for  the  service  to  begin,  and  the 
disappearance  of  its  rays  before  the  rising  sun,  the  entire 
camel,  body  and  bones,  skin,  blood  and  entrails,  is  wholly 
devoured.  The  plain  meaning  of  this  is  that  the  victim  was 
devoured  before  its  life  had  left  the  still  warm  blood  and 
flesh — raw  flesh  is  called  "  living  "  flesh  in  Hebrew  and 
Syriac — and  that  thus  in  the  most  literal  way  all  those  who 
shared  in  the  ceremony  absorbed  part  of  the  victim's  life 
into  themselves.  One  sees  how  much  more  forcibly  than 
any  ordinary  meal  such  a  rite  expresses  the  establishment 
or  confirmation  of  a  bond  of  common  life  between  the 
worshippers,  and  also,  since  the  blood  is  shed  upon  the 
altar  itself,  between  the  worshippers  and  their  god. 

In  this  sacrifice,  then,  the  significant  factors  are  two  :  the 
conveyance  of  the  living  blood  to  the  godhead,  and  the 
absorption  of  the  living  flesh  and  blood  into  the  flesh  and 
blood  of  the  worshippers.  Each  of  these  is  effected  in  the 
simplest  and  most  direct  manner,  so  that  the  meaning 
of  the  ritual  is  perfectly  transparent.     In  later  Arabian 


LECT.   IX. 


SACRIFICE.  321 


sacrifices,  and  «till  more  in  the  sacrifices  of  the  more 
civilised  Semitic  nations,  the  primitive  crudity  of  tlie 
ceremonial  was  modified,  and  the  meaning  of  the  act  is 
therefore  more  or  less  disguised,  but  the  essential  type  of 
the  ritual  remains  the  same. 

In  all  Arabian  sacrifices  except  the  holocaust — whicli 
occurs  only  in  the  case  of  human  victims — the  godvvard 
side  of  the  ritual  is  summed  up  in  the  shedding  of  the 
victim's  blood,  so  that  it  flows  over  the  sacred  symbol,  or 
gathers  in  a  pit  {ghahghdb)  at  the  foot  of  the  altar  idol. 
An  application  of  the  blood  to  the  summit  of  the  sacred 
stone  may  be  added,  but  that  is  all.^  What  enters  the 
ghahghab  is  held  to  be  conveyed  to  the  deity  ;  thus  at 
certain  Arabian  shrines  the  pit  under  the  altar  was  the 
place  where  votive  treasures  were  deposited.  A  pit  to 
receive  the  blood  existed  also  at  Jerusalem  under  the 
altar  of  burnt-offering,  and  similarly  in  certain  Syrian 
sacrifices  the  blood  was  collected  in  a  hollow,  which 
apparently  bore  the  name  of  mashhan,  and  thus  was 
designated  as  the  habitation  of  the  godhead." 

In  Arabia,  accordingly,  the  most  solemn  act  in  the  ritual 
is  the  shedding  of  the  blood,  which  in  Nilus's  narrative 
takes  place  at  the  moment  when  the  sacred  chant  comes 
to  an  end.  This,  therefore,  is  the  crisis  of  the  service,  to 
which  the  choral  procession  round  the  altar  leads  up.'* 
In  later  Arabia  the  tawdf,  or  act  of  circling  the  sacred 
stone,   was   still    a   principal   part   of   religion ;    but   even 

1  Zohair,  x.  24. 

-  See  the  te.xt  published  liy  Dozy  and  De  Goeje  in  the  Aden  of  the 
Leyden  Congress  of  Orientalists,  1883,  vol.  iii.  pp.  337,  363.  For  the 
ijhabghab,  see  p.  181  mpra,  and  Wellhauseii,  p.  100.  Compare  also  the 
Persian  ritual,   Straho,    xv.    3.    14,    and    that    of  certain   Greek  sacrifices, 

riutarch,   Arintidcs,  xxi.  :    tov  ravpov  tis  rhv  Tupay  iT^a,\a.i. 

3  The  festal  song  of  praise  (^pH,  tahlil)  properly  goes  with  the  ilance 
round  the  altar  (cf.  Ps.  xxvi.  6  sq.),  for  in  primitive  times  song  and  dance 
are  inseparable. 

X 


322  ARABIAN 


LECT.   IX. 


before  Mohammed's  time  it  had  begun  to  be  dissociated 
from  sacrifice,  and  become  a  meaningless  ceremony. 
Again,  the  original  significance  of  the  wocilf,  or  "  standing," 
which  in  the  ritual  of  the  post-Mohammedan  pilgrimage 
has  in  like  manner  become  an  unmeaning  ceremomy,  is 
doubtless  correctly  explained  by  AYellhausen,  who  compares 
it  with  the  scene  described  by  more  than  one  old  poet 
where  the  worshippers  stand  round  the  altar  idol,  at  a 
respectful  distance,  gazing  with  rapt  attention,  while  the 
slaughtered  victims  lie  stretched  on  the  ground.  The 
moment  of  this  act  of  adoration  must  be  that  when  the 
slaughter  of  tlie  victims  is  just  over,  or  still  in  progress, 
and  their  blood  is  draining  into  the  ghabghah,  or  being 
applied  by  the  priest  to  the  head  of  the  nosh} 

In  the  developed  forms  of  Xorth  Semitic  worship, 
where  fire  -  sacrifices  prevail,  the  slaughter  of  the  victim 
loses  its  importance  as  the  critical  point  in  the  ritual. 
The  altar  is  above  all  things  a  hearth,  and  the  burning  of 
the  sacrificial  fat  is  the  most  solemn  part  of  the  service. 

This,  however,  is  certainly  not  primitive ;  for  even  in 
the  period  of  fire  -  sacrifice  the  Hebrew  altar  is  called 
naio,  that  is  "  the  place  of  slaughter,"  ^  and  in  ancient 
times  the  victim  was  slain  on  or  beside  the  altar,  just  as 
among  the  Arabs,  as  appears  from  the  account  of  the 
sacrifice  of  Isaac,  and  from  1  Sam.  xiv.  34.^  The 
latter  passage  proves  that  in  the  time  of  Saul  the  Hebrews 
still  knew  a  form  of   sacrifice  in  which   the   offerinu:  was 


o 


1  Wellh.,  p.  56  sq.  ;  Yaeut,  iii.  94,  1.  13  sq.  (cf.  "S dUe'ke in  ZDMG.  1887, 
p.  721)  ;  ihkl.  p.  182,  1.  2  sq.  (supra,  p.  211). 

-  Aram,  madbah,  Arab,  madhbah  ;  the  latter  means  also  a  trench  in  the 
ground,  which  is  intelligible  from  what  has  been  said  about  the  ghahghah. 

3  Supra,  p.  185.  In  Ps.  cxviii.  27  the  festal  victim  is  bound  with 
cords  to  the  horns  of  the  altar,  a  relic  of  ancient  usage  which  was  no 
longer  intelligible  to  the  Scptuagint  translators  or  to  the  Jewish  traditional 
expositors.  Cf.  the  sacrificial  stake  to  which  the  victim  is  bound  in  Vedic 
sacrifices. 


LECT.  IX.  SACRIFICE.  323 

completed  in  the  oblation  of  the  blood.  And  even  in 
the  case  of  fire-sacrifice  the  blood  was  not  cast  upon  the 
flames,  but  dashed  against  the  sides  of  the  altar  or  poured 
out  at  its  foot ;  the  new  ritual  was  not  able  wholly  to 
displace  the  old. 

As  regards  the  manward  part  of  the  ritual,  the  revolt- 
ing details  given  by  Nilus  have  naturally  no  complete 
parallel  in  the  worship  of  the  more  civilised  Semites,  or 
even  of  the  later  Arabs,  In  lieu  of  the  scramble  described 
by  Nilus — the  wild  rush  to  cut  gobbets  of  flesh  from  the 
still  quivering  victim — we  find  among  the  later  Arabs  a 
partition  of  the  sacrificial  flesh  among  all  who  are  present 
at  the  ceremony.  Yet  it  seems  possible  that  the  ijaza,  or 
"  permission,"  that  is,  the  word  of  command  that  terminates 
the  wocuf,  was  originally  the  permission  to  fall  upon  the 
slaughtered  victim.  In  the  Meccan  pilgrimage  the  ijaza 
which  terminated  the  wocuf  at  'Arafa  was  the  signal  for 
a  hot  race  to  the  neighbouring  sanctuary  of  Mozdalifa, 
where  the  sacred  fire  of  the  god  Cozah  burned ;  it  was,  in 
fact,  not  so  much  the  permission  to  leave  'Arafa  as  to  draw 
near  to  Cozah.  The  race  itself  is  called  ifcida,  which  may 
mean  either  "  dispersion "  or  "  distribution."  It  cannot 
well  mean  the  former,  for  'Arafa  is  not  holy  ground,  but 
merely  the  point  of  assemblage,  just  outside  the  Haram, 
at  which  the  ceremonies  began,  and  the  station  at  'Arafa 
is  only  the  preparation  for  the  vigil  at  Mozdalifa.  On 
the  other  hand,  if  the  meaning  is  "  distribution,"  the  ifdda 
answers  to  the  rush  of  Xilus's  Saracens  to  partake  of  the 
sacrifice.  The  only  difference  is  that  at  Mozdalifa  the 
crowd  is  not  allowed  to  assemble  close  to  the  altar,  but 
has  to  watch  the  performance  of  the  solemn  rites  from 
afar;  compare  Ex.  xix,  10-13.^ 

'  It  may  be  noted  that  the  ceremonies  at  Mozdalifa  lay  wholly  between 
sunrise  and  sunset,  and  that  there  was  apparently  one  sacri6ce  just  at  or 


324  BLOOD-EATING    IN 


LF.CT.    IX. 


The  siibstitutiou  of  an  orderly  division  of  the  victim 
for  the  scramble  described  by  Nilus  does  not  touch  the 
meaning  of  the  ceremonial.  Much  more  important,  from 
its  effect  in  disguising  an  essential  feature  in  the  ritual, 
is  the  modification  by  which,  in  most  Semitic  sacrifices, 
the  flesh  is  not  eaten  raw  but  sodden  or  roasted,  for  in 
this  way  the  point  is  lost  that  the  participants  receive 
into  themselves  the  very  life  of  the  victim.  But  it  is 
obvious  that  this  change  could  not  fail  to  establish  itself 
with  the  progress  of  civilisation,  and  various  indications 
remain  to  shew  that  the  idea  of  communion  in  the  actual 
life  of  the  victim  was  not  altogether  lost.  Even  in  the 
latest,  post-exilic,  part  of  the  Pentateuchal  legislation  it 
was  found  necessary  in  the  law  of  the  Passover  to  forbid 
the  Paschal  lamb  to  be  devoured  raw ;  and  that  bloody 
morsels  were  consumed  by  the  heathen  in  Palestine,  and 
also  by  the  less  orthodox  Israelites,  is  apparent  from 
Zech.  ix.  7,  Ezek.  xxxiii.  25,^  Lev.  xix.  26.  The  context 
of  these  passages,  and  the  penalty  of  excommunication 
attached  to  the  eating  of  blood  in  Lev.  vii.  27,  justify  us 
in  assuming  that  the  heathen  practice  had  a  directly 
religious  significance,  and  occurred  in  connection  witli 
sacrifice  to  heathen  deities.  That  the  eating  of  blood  was 
in  fact  used,  as  an  act  of  communion  with  heathen  deities, 
is  affirmed  by  Maimonides,  not  as  a  mere  inference  from 
the  Biblical  texts,  but  on   the  basis   of  Arabic  accounts  of 

after  sunset  and  another  before  sunrise, — anotlier  point  of  contact  with  the 
ritual  described  by  Nilus.  The  icocuf  corresponding  to  the  morning  sacrifice 
was  of  course  held  at  Mozdalifa  Mithin  the  Harani,  for  the  pilgrims  were 
already  consecrated  by  the  jjrevious  service.  Nabigha  in  two  places  speaks 
of  a  race  of  pilgrims  to  a  place  called  Hal.  If  the  reference  is  to  the  Meccan 
hojj,  Hal  must  be  Mozdalifa,  not,  as  the  geograjihers  suppose,  a  place  at 
'Arafa. 

'  I  cannot  comprehend  «'hy  Cornill  corrects  Ezek.  xxxiii.  25  by  Ezek.  xviii. 
6,  xxii.  9,  and  not  conversely  ;  cf.  LXX.  on  Lev.  xix.  26,  where  the  same 
mistake  occurs. 


LECT.  IX.  LATER   SACRIFICES.  325 

the  religion  of  the  Harranians.^  It  would  seem,  liowever, 
that  even  among  the  heathen  of  the  Northern  Semitic 
lands  the  ritual  of  blood-eating  must  have  been  rare ; 
presumably,  indeed,  it  was  confined  to  certain  mystie 
initiations,  and  did  not  extend  to  ordinary  sacrifices.^ 

In  the  legal  sacrifices  of  the  Hebrews  blood  was  never 
eaten,  but  in  the  covenant  sacrifice  of  Ex.  xxiv.  it  is 
sprinkled  on  tlie  worshippers,  which,  as  we  have  already 
learned  by  a  comparison  of  tlie  various  forms  of  the  blood 
covenant  between  men,  lias  the  same  meaning.  In  later 
forms  of  sacrifice  this  feature  disappears,  and  the  com- 
munion between  god  and  man,  which  is  still  the  main 
thing  in  ordinary  sacrifices,  is  expressed  by  burning  part 
of  the  flesh  on  the  altar,  while  tlie  rest  is  cooked  and 
eaten    by    the   worshippers.      But    the    application    of   the 

^  Dnliilat  al-IIiurlii,  iii.  46,  vol.  iii.  p.  104  of  Mimk's  oil.  (Paris,  1866) 
and  p.  371  of  liis  translation.  Tliat  Mainioiiides  had  actual  accounts  of  the 
Harranians  to  go  on  apjicars  })y  comparing  tlie  passage  with  that  (puitid 
ahovc  from  an  Arabic  source  in  tlie  Acfc-i  of  the  Leydcn  Congress;  but 
there  may  be  a  doubt  whether  his  authorities  attested  blood-eating  among 
the  Harranians,  or  only  sujiplied  hints  by  which  he  interpreted  the  Biblical 
evidence. 

■-'  For  the  mystic  sacrifices  of  the  lieatlien  Semites  see  above,  p.  9.7 '2  fttjq. 
That  these  sacrifices  were  eaten  with  the  blood  appears  from  a  comparison 
of  Isa.  Ixv.  4,  Ixvi.  3,  17.  All  these  passages  refer  to  the  same  circle  of  rites, 
in  which  the  victims  chosen  were  such  animals  as  were  strii'tl)'  taboo  in 
ordinary  life — the  swine,  the  dog,  the  mouse  and  vermin  ()*pJi')  generally. 
To  such  sacrifices,  as  we  learn  from  Ixvi.  17,  a  peculiar  consecrating  and 
])urifying  cfTicacy  was  attached,  whi(!h  must  be  ascribed  to  the  sacramental 
jiarticipation  in  the  sacrosanct  Hesh.  Tiie  flesh  was  eaten  in  the  form  of 
broth,  which  in  Ixv.  4  is  called  broth  of  piiji/u'im,  i.e.  of  carrion,  or  flesh  so 
killed  as  to  retain  the  blood  in  it  (Ezck.  iv.  14  ;  cf.  Zech.  ix.  7).  We  are 
to  think,  therefore,  of  a  broth  made  with  the  blood,  like  the  black  broth  of 
the  Spartans,  which  seems  also  to  have  been  originally  a  sacred  food,  reserved 
for  warrioi-s.  The  dog-sacrifice  in  Ixvi.  3  is  killed  by  breaking  its  neck, 
which  agrees  with  this  conclusion.  Sinnlarly  in  the  mysteries  of  the  Ainos 
the  sacred  bear,  which  forms  the  sacrifice,  is  killed  without  olfusion  of  blood  ; 
cf.  the  Indian  rit<;,  Strabo,  xv.  1.  54  (Satapatha  Brahmana,  tr.  Eggeling,  ii. 
190),  and  the  Cap])adocian,  ilntl.  xv.  3.  15  ;  also  the  Finnish  sacrifice, 
Mannluirdt,  Ant.  Wald  n.  Ftldkiiltc,  p.  160,  and  other  cases  of  the  same 
kind,  Journ.  R.  Oeofj.  Soc.  vol.  iii.  p.  283,  vol.  xl.  p.  171.  Spencer 
compares  the  irtiicra.  of  Acts  xv.  20. 


326  THE   SPEINKLING  lect.  ix. 

living  blood  to  the  worshipper  is  retained  in  certain  special 
cases — at  the  consecration  of  priests  and  the  purification 
of  a  leper  ^ — where  it  is  proper  to  express  in  the  strongest 
way  the  establishment  of  a  special  bond  between  the  god 
and  his  servant,^  or  the  restitution  of  one  who  has  been 
cut  off  from  religious  fellowship  with  the  deity  and  the 
community  of  his  worshippers.  In  like  manner,  in  the 
forms  of  sin-offering  described  in  Lev.  iv.,  it  is  at  least 
required  that  the  priest  should  dip  his  finger  in  the  blood 
of  the  victim ;  and  in  this  kind  of  ritual,  as  is  expressly 
stated  in  Lev.  x.  17,  the  priest  acts  as  the  representative 
of  the  sinner  or  bears  his  sin.  Again,  the  blood  of  the 
Paschal  lamb  is  applied  to  the  door-posts,  and  so  extends 
its  efficacy  to  all  within  the  dwelling — the  "  house  "  in  all 
the  Semitic  languages  standing  for  the  household  or  family. 
Quite  similarly,  before  the  Coraish  went  forth  to  the  battle 
of  Bedr,  camels  were  slaughtered,  and  every  tent  was 
sprinkled  with  the  blood  of  a  victim  whose  life  was  still  in 
it^  This  last  detail  supplies  a  noteworthy  parallel  to 
Nilus's  narrative ;  and  so  also  the  precept  that  the  passover 
must  be  eaten  in  haste,  in  ordinary  outdoor  attire,  and 
that  no  part  of  it  must  remain  till  the  morning,  becomes 
intelligible  if  we  regard  it  as  having  come  down  from  a 
time  when  the  living  flesh  was  hastily  devoured  beside  the 
altar  before  the  sun  rose."*     From  all  this  it  is  apparent 

^  Lev.  viii.  23,  xiv.  6,  14. 

2  The  relation  between  God  and  His  priests  rests  on  a  covenant  (Deut. 
xxxiii.  9  ;  Mai.  ii.  4  sqq.).  *  Wacidi,  ed.  Kremer,  ji.  28,  1.  8. 

*  There  is  so  much  that  is  antique  about  the  Paschal  ritual  that  one  is 
tempted  to  think  that  the  law  of  Ex.  xii.  46,  "  neither  shall  ye  break  a 
bone  thereof,"  may  be  a  prohibition  of  some  usage  descended  from  the  rule, 
given  by  Nilus,  that  the  bones  as  well  as  the  flesh  must  be  consumed.  AVere 
the  bones  in  certain  sacrifices  pounded  and  eaten  ?  If  so,  we  can  understand 
the  Harranian  legend  {Fihrist,  p.  322,  1.  29),  that  the  bones  of  the  murdered 
Tammuz  were  pounded  in  a  mill ;  for  the  legends  of  the  death  of  the  gods — 
as  we  see  in  the  Dionysiac  myths — are  ordinarily  projections  into  mythology 
of  the  rules  of  sacrificial  ritual. 


LECT.  IX.  OF   BLOOD.  327 


that  the  ritual  described  by  Nilus  is  by  no  means  an 
isolated  invention  of  the  religious  fancy,  in  one  of  the  most 
barbarous  corners  of  the  Semitic  world,  but  a  very  typical 
embodiment  of  the  main  ideas  that  underlie  the  sacrifices 
of  the  Semites  generally.  Even  in  its  details  it  probably 
comes  nearer  to  the  primitive  form  of  Semitic  worship  than 
any  other  sacrifice  of  which  we  have  a  description. 

We  may  now  take  it  as  made  out  that,  throughout  the 
Semitic  field,  the  fundamental  idea  of  sacrifice  is  not  that 
of  a  sacred  tribute,  but  of  communion  between  the  god  and 
his  worshippers  by  joint  participation  in  the  living  flesh 
and  blood  of  a  sacred  victim.  We  see,  however,  that  in 
the  more  advanced  forms  of  ritual  this  idea  becomes 
attenuated  and  tends  to  disappear,  at  least  in  the  commoner 
kinds  of  sacrifice.  When  men  cease  to  eat  raw  or  living 
flesh,  the  blood,  to  the  exclusion  of  the  solid  parts  of  the 
body,  comes  to  be  regarded  as  the  vehicle  of  life  and  the 
true  res  sacramenti.  And  the  nature  of  the  sacrifice  as  a 
sacramental  act  is  still  further  disguised  when — for  reasons 
that  will  by  and  by  appear  more  clearly — the  sacramental 
blood  is  no  longer  drunk  by  the  worshippers  but  only 
sprinkled  on  their  persons,  or  finally  finds  no  manward 
application  at  all,  but  is  wholly  poured  out  at  the  altar, 
so  that  it  becomes  the  proper  share  of  the  deity,  while  the 
flesh  is  left  to  be  eaten  by  man.  This  is  the  common 
form  of  Arabian  sacrifice,  and  among  the  Hebrews  the 
same  form  is  attested  by  1  Sam.  xiv.  34.  At  this  stage, 
at  least  among  the  Hebrews,  the  original  sanctity  of  the 
life  of  domestic  animals  is  still  recognised  in  a  modified 
form,  inasmuch  as  it  is  held  unlawful  to  use  their  flesh  for 
food  except  in  a  sacrificial  meal.  But  this  rule  is  not 
strict  enough  to  prevent  flesh  from  becoming  a  familiar 
luxury.  Sacrifices  are  multiplied  on  trivial  occasions  of 
religious  gladness  or  social  festivity,  and  the  rite  of  eating 


328  ATONING  LECT.  IX. 


at  the  sanctuary  loses  the  character  of  an  exceptional 
sacrament,  and  means  no  more  than  that  men  are  invited 
to  feast  and  be  merry  at  the  table  of  their  god,  or  that  no 
feast  is  complete  in  which  the  god  has  not  his  share. 

This  stage  in  the  evolution  of  ritual  is  represented  by 
the  worship  of  tlie  Hebrew  higli  places,  or,  beyond  the 
Semitic  field,  by  the  religion  of  the  agricultural  com- 
munities of  Greece.  Historically,  therefore,  it  coincides 
with  tlie  stage  of  religious  development  in  which  the 
deity  is  conceived  as  the  king  of  his  people  and  the  lord 
of  the  land,  and  as  such  is  habitually  approached  with 
gifts  and  tribute.  It  was  the  rule  of  antiquity,  and  still 
is  the  rule  in  the  East,  that  the  inferior  must  not  present 
himself  before  his  superior  without  a  gift  to  "  smooth  his 
face "  and  make  him  gracious.^  The  same  phrase  is 
habitually  applied  in  the  Old  Testament  to  acts  of 
sacrificial  worship,  and  in  Ex.  xxiii.  15  the  rule  is  formu- 
lated that  no  one  shall  appear  before  Jehovah  empty- 
handed.      Awpa  6eov<i  ireWei,  hwp   alSoLou<i  /BaaiXija';. 

As  the  commonest  gifts  in  a  simple  agricultural  state  of 
society  necessarily  consisted  of  grain,  fruits  and  cattle, 
which  served  to  maintain  the  open  hospitality  that  pre- 
vailed at  the  courts  of  kings  and  great  chiefs,  it  was  natural 
that  animal  sacrifices,  as  soon  as  their  sacramental  signifi- 
cance fell  into  the  background,  should  be  mainly  regarded 
as  gifts  of  liomage,  presented  at  the  court  of  the  divine 
king,  out  of  which  he  maintained  a  public  table  for  his 
worshippers.  In  part  they  were  summed  up  along  witli 
the  cereal  oblations  of  first-fruits  as  stated  tributes,  which 
every  one  who  desired  to  retain  tlie  favour  of  the  god  was 
expected   to   present    at   fixed  seasons,  in    part  they  were 

M^3D  n^n,  Prov.  xix.  6;  Ps.  xlv.  13  (12),  E.V.,  "  intreat  his  favour.' 
In  the  Old  Testament  the  phrase  is  much  oftener  used  of  acts  of  worsliip 
addressed  to  the  deity,  e.g.  1  Sam.  xiii.  12,  of  the  burnt-offering. 


LF.CT.  IX.  OFFERINGS.  320 


special  odfeiiiigs  with  which  the  worshipper  associated 
special  petitions,  or  with  which  he  approached  the  deity  to 
present  liis  excuses  for  a  fault  and  request  forgiveness.* 
In  the  case  where  it  is  the  business  of  the  worshipper  t<» 
make  satisfaction  for  an  offence,  the  gift  may  assume 
rather  the  character  of  a  fine  payable  at  the  sanctuary  ; 
for  in  the  oldest  free  communities  personal  chastisement 
is  reserved  for  slaves,  and  the  offences  of  freemen  are 
habitually  wiped  out  by  the  payment  of  an  amerce- 
ment.^ But  in  the  older  Hebrew  custom  the  fines 
paid  to  the  sanctuary  do  not  appear  to  have  taken  the 
form  of  victims  for  sacrifice,  but  rather  of  payments  in 
money  to  the  priest,^  and  the  atoning  effect  ascribed  to 
gifts  and  sacrifices  of  all  kinds  seems  simply  to  rest  on 
the  general  principle  that  a  gift  smooths  the  face  and 
pacifies  anger. 

It  has  sometimes  been  supposed  tliat  this  is  the  oldest 
form  of  the  idea  of  atoning  sacrifice,  and  that  the  elaborate 
piacula,  which  begin  to  take  the  chief  place  in  the  altar 
ritual  of  the  Semites  from  the  seventh  century  onwards, 
are  all  developed  out  of  it.  The  chief  argument  that 
appears  to  support  this  view  is  that  tlie  whole  burnt- 
offering,  which  is  entirely  made  over  to  the  deity,  the 
worsliipper  retaining  no  part  for  his  own  use,  is  prominent 
among  piacular  sacrifices,  and  may  even  be  regarded  as 
the  piacular  sacrifice  par  excellence.  In  tlie  later  forms 
of  Syrian  lieathenism  the  sacrificial  meal  practically 
disappears,  and  almost  the  whole  altar  service  consists  of 

^  1  Sam.  xxvi.  19,  "If  Joliovah  hath  stirred  thee  up  against  me,  let  Him 
be  gratified  by  an  oblation." 

■^  The  reason  of  thi.s  is  that  not  even  a  chief  can  strike  or  mutilate  a  free- 
man without  ex|iosing  himself  to  retaliation.  This  is  still  the  case  amonj^ 
the  Bedouins,  and  so  it  was  also  in  ancient  Israel  ;  see  my  Old  TeMawt  ut 
in  the  Jewish  Church  (Edin.  1881),  p.  :5G7. 

^  1  Kings  xii.  16  ;  cf.  Amos  ii.  8,  Hos.  iv.  8. 


330  HOLOCAUSTS    AND  lect.  tx. 

piacular  holocausts/  and  among  the  Jews  the  highest  sm- 
ofterings,  whose  blood  was  brought  into  the  inner  sanctuary, 
were  wholly  consumed,  but  not  upon  the  altar,^  while  the 
liesh  of  other  sin-offerings  was  at  least  withdrawn  from  the 
offerer  and  eaten  by  the  priests. 

"We  have  seen,  however,  that  a  different  and  profounder 
conception  of  atonement,  as  the  creation  of  a  life  -  bond 
between  the  worshipper  and  his  god,  appears  in  the  most 
primitive  type  of  Semitic  sacrifices,  and  that  traces  of  it 
can  still  be  found  in  many  parts  of  the  later  ritual.  Forms 
of  consecration  and  atonement  in  which  the  blood  of  the 
victim  is  applied  to  the  worshipper,  or  the  blood  of  the 
worshipper  conveyed  to  the  symbol  of  godhead,  occur  in  all 
stages  of  heathen  religion,  not  only  among  the  Semites  but 
among  the  Greeks  and  other  races ;  and  even  on  a  priori 
grounds  it  seems  probable  that  when  the  Northern  Semites, 
in  the  distress  and  terror  produced  by  the  political  con- 
vulsions of  the  seventh  century,  began  to  cast  about  for 
rites  of  extraordinary  potency  to  conjure  the  anger  of  the 
gods,  they  were  guided  by  the  principle  that  ancient  and 
half  obsolete  forms  of  ritual  are  more  efficacious  than  the 
everyday  practices  of  religion. 

Further,  it  is  to  be  observed  that  in  the  Hebrew  ritual 
both  of  the  holocaust  and  of  the  sin-offering  the  victim 
is  slain  at  the  altar  "  before  Jehovah,"  a  phrase  which  is 
wanting  in  the  rule  about  ordinary  sacrifices,  and  implies 
that  the  act  of  slaughter  and  the  effusion  of  the  blood 
beside  the  altar  have  a  special  significance,  as  in  the 
ancient  Arabian  ritual.  Moreover,  in  the  sin  -  offering 
there   is   still — although   in    a   very   attenuated    form — a 

'  That  the  Harranians  never  ate  sacrificial  flesh  seems  to  be  an  exaggera- 
tion,  but  one  based  on  the  prevalent  cliaracter  of  their  ritual  ;  see  Chwolsohn, 
if.  89  sq. 

-  Lev.  vi.  23  (30),  xvi.  27,  iv.  11,  20. 


LECT.  IX.  SIN-OFFERIXGS.  331 

trace  of  the  man  ward  application  of  the  blood,  when 
the  priest  dips  his  finger  in  it,  and  so  applies  it  to  thii 
horns  of  the  altar,  instead  of  merely  dashing  it  against 
the  sides  of  the  altar  from  a  bowl ;  ^  and  also  as  regards 
the  destination  of  the  flesh,  which  is  eaten  by  the  priests 
in  the  holy  place,  it  is  clear  from  Lev.  x.  17  tliat  the 
flesh  is  given  to  the  priests  because  they  minister  as  the 
representatives  of  the  sinful  people,  and  that  the  act  of 
eating  it  is  an  essential  part  of  the  ceremony,  exactly  as  in 
the  old  ritual  of  communion.  In  fact  the  law  expressly 
recognises  that  the  flesh  and  blood  of  the  sin-offering  is  a 
sanctifying  medium  of  extraordinary  potency ;  whosoever 
touches  the  flesh  becomes  holy,  the  garment  on  which  the 
blood  falls  must  be  washed  in  a  holy  place,  and  even  the 
vessel  in  which  the  flesh  is  sodden  must  be  broken  or 
scoured  to  remove  the  infection  of  its  sanctity.^  That 
this  is  the  reason  why  none  but  the  priests  are  allowed 
to  eat  of  it  has  been  rightly  discerned  by  Ewald ;  ^  the 
flesh,  like  the  sacramental  cup  in  the  Eoman  Catliolic 
Church,  was  too  sacred  to  be  touched  by  the  laity.  Thus 
the  Levitical  sin-offering  is  essentially  identical  with  the 
ancient  sacrament  of  communion  in  a  sacred  life ;  only  I 
the  communion  is  restricted  to  the  priests,  in  accordance 
with  the  general  principle  of  the  priestly  legislation, 
which  surrounds  the  holy  things  of  Israel  by  fence 
within  fence,  and  makes  all  access  to  God  pass  through 
the  mediation  of  the  priesthood. 

I  am  not  aware  that  anything  quite  parallel  to  the 
ordinary  Hebrew  sin-offering  occurs  among  the  other 
Semites ;  and  indeed  no  other  Semitic  religion  appears 
to   have   developed   to   the   same   extent   the   doctrine   of 

1  Lev.  iv.  6,  17,  34,  compared  with  chap.  iii.  2.     plT  is  to  sprinkle  or  dash 
from  the  bowl,  pITD. 

'^  Lev.  vi.  20  (27).  '  Alterthiimer,  3rd  eJ.  p.  87  sq. 


332  HOLINESS    OF  lkct.  ix. 


the  consuming  holiness  of  God,  and  the  consequent  need 
for  priestly  intervention  between  the  laity  and  the  most 
holy  things.  But  among  the  Eomans  the  tlesh  of  certain 
piacula  was  eaten  by  the  priests,  and  in  the  piacular 
sacrifice  of  the  Arval  brothers  the  ministrants  also  partook 
of  the  blood.^  Among  the  Grreeks,  again,  piacular  victims 
— like  the  highest  forms  of  the  Hebrew  sin-offering — 
were  not  eaten  at  all,  but  either  burned,  or  buried,  or 
cast  into  the  sea,  or  carried  up  into  some  desert  mountain 
far  from  the  foot  of  man."  It  is  commonly  supposed 
that  this  was  done  because  they  were  unclean,  being 
laden  with  the  shis  of  the  guilty  worshippers  ;  but  this 
explanation  is  excluded,  not  only  by  the  analogy  of  the 
Hebrew  sin-offering,  which  is  a  cddesh  codashlm,  or  holy 
thing  of  the  first  class,  but  by  various  indications  in  Greek 
myth  and  ritual.  For  to  the  Greeks  earth  and  sea  are 
not  impure  but  holy,  and  at  Troezen  a  sacred  laurel  was 
believed  to  have  grow^n  from  the  buried  carcase  of  the 
victim  used  in  the  atonement  for  Orestes.^  Further,  tlie 
favourite  piacular  victims  were  sacred  animals,  e.g.  the 
swine  of  Demeter  and  the  dog  of  Hecate,  and  the 
essential  part  of  the  lustration  consisted  in  the  applica- 
tion of  the  blood  of  the  offering  to  the  guilty  person, 
which  is  only  intelligible  if  the  victim  was  a  holy  sacra- 
ment. It  was  indeed  too  holy  to  be  left  in  permanent 
contact  with  a  man  who  was  presently  to  return  to 
common  life,  and  therefore  it  was  washed  off  aoain 
with  water.*  According  to  Porphyry  the  man  who 
touched  a  sacrifice  designed  to  avert  the  ano-er  of  the 
gods    was    required    to    bathe    and    wash    his    clothes    in 

'  Marquardt,  San-ahcesen,  p.  185  ;  Sorvius  on  Mn.,  iii.  231. 

-  Hippocrates,  cd.  Little,  vi.  362. 

•'  I'ausanias,  ii.  31.  8. 

•*  Apoll.  Rhod.,  Anjvn.  iv.  702  nqq.    Cf.  Schoemann,  dr.  Alli.rth.  \\.  v.  13. 


LFXT.  IX.  SIN-OFFERINGS.  333 


running  water  before  entering  the  city  or  his  house/  an 
ordinance  which  recurs  in  the  case  of  sucli  Hebrew  sin- 
offerings  as  were  not  eaten,  and  of  the  rt-d  heifer  whose 
ashes  were  used  in  histrations.  These  were  burnt  "  with- 
out the  camp,"  and  botli  tlie  luinistrant  priest  and  th(! 
man  who  disposed  of  the  body  had  to  bathe  and  wash 
their  clothes  exactly  as  in  the  Greek  ritual.' 

From  all  this  it  would  appear  that  the  sin-offering  and 
other  forms  of  piacula,  including  the  holocaust,  in  wliich 
there  is  no  sacrificial  meal  of  which  tlie  sacrificer  himself 
partakes,  are  yet  lineally  descended  from  the  ancient 
ritual  of  sacrificial  communion  between  the  worshippers 
and  their  god,  and  at  bottom  rest  on  the  same  principle 
with  those  ordinary  sacrifices  in  which  the  sacrificial  meal 
played  a  chief  part.  Lut  the  development  of  this  part  of 
our  subject  must  be  reserved  for  another  lecture,  in  which 
I  will  try  to  explain  how  the  original  form  of  sacrifice 
came  to  1k'  dillerentiated  into  two  distinct  types  of 
worship,  and  gave  rise  on  the  one  hand  to  the  "  honorific  " 
or  ordinary,  and  on  the  other  to  the  "  piacular "  or 
exceptional  sacrifices  of  later  times. 

1  De  Abst.  ii.  44. 

'^  Lev,  xvi.  24,  28  ;  Xiinili.  xix.  7-10. 


LECTUEE    X. 

TJIE    DEVELOPMENT    OF    SACIIIFICIAL    EITUAL 

FIRE-SACRIFICES    AND    PIACULA. 

We  have  come  to  see  that  the  sin-offering  as  well  as  the 
ordinary  sacrificial  meal  is  lineally  descended  from  the 
primitive  sacrifice  of  communion,  in  which  the  victim  is 
a  sacred  animal  that  may  not  ordinarily  be  killed  or  used 
for  food.  But  while  in  the  one  case  the  notion  of  the 
special  holiness  and  inviolable  character  of  the  victim  has 
gradually  faded  away,  in  the  other  this  aspect  of  the 
sacrifice  has  been  intensified,  till  even  a  religious  participa- 
tion in  the  flesh  is  regarded  as  an  impiety.  Each  of  these 
opposite  processes  can  to  a  certain  extent  be  traced  from 
stage  to  stage.  As  regards  the  sacrificial  meal  we  find, 
both  in  the  case  of  Nilus's  Saracens  and  in  that  of  African 
peoples,  with  whom  the  ox  has  a  sanctity  similar  to  that 
which  the  Arabs  ascribed  to  the  camel,  that  the  sacra- 
mental flesh  begins  to  be  eaten  as  food  under  the  pressure 
of  necessity ;  and  when  this  is  done,  it  also  begins  to  be 
cooked  like  other  food.  Then  we  have  the  stage,  repre- 
sented by  the  early  Hebrew  religion,  in  which  domestic 
animals  are  freely  eaten,  l)ut  only  on  condition  that  they 
are  presented  as  sacrifices  at  the  altar  and  consumed  in  a 
sacred  feast.  And,  finally,  a  stage  is  reached  in  which,  as 
in  Greece  in  the  time  of  the  Apostle  Paul,  sacrificial  meat 
is  freely  sold  in  the  shambles,  or,  as  in  Arabia  before 
Mohammed,  nothing  more  is  required  than  that  the  beast 


LECT.  X.         DEVELOPMENT    OF    ATONINO    RITES.  335 

designed  for  food  shall  be  slain  in  the  name  of  a  god.  Tn 
piacular  sacrifices,  on  the  other  hand,  we  find,  in  a  variety 
of  expressions,  a  struggle  between  the  feeling  that  the 
victim  is  too  holy  to  be  eaten  or  even  touched,  and  the 
principle  that  its  atoning  efficacy  depends  on  the  participa- 
tion of  the  worshippers  in  its  life,  flesh  and  blood.  In 
one  rite  the  flesh  may  be  eaten,  or  the  blood  drunk,  but 
only  by  consecrated  priests  ;  in  another,  the  flesh  is  burned, 
but  the  blood  is  poured  on  the  hands  or  body  of  the  sinner  ; 
in  another,  the  lustration  is  effected  with  the  ashes  of  the 
victim  (the  red  heifer  of  the  Jewish  law) ;  or,  finally,  it  is 
enough  that  the  worshipper  should  lay  his  hands  on  the 
head  of  the  victim  before  its  slaughter,  and  that  then  its 
life-blood  should  be  presented  at  the  altar. 

The  reasons  for  the  gradual  degradation  of  ordinary 
sacrifice  are  not  far  to  seek ;  they  are  to  be  found,  on  the 
one  hand,  in  the  general  causes  whicli  make  it  impossible  for 
men  above  the  state  of  savagery  to  retain  a  literal  faith  in 
the  consanguinity  of  animal  kinds  with  gods  and  men,  and, 
on  the  other  hand,  in  the  pressure  of  hunger,  and  afterwards 
in  the  taste  for  animal  food,  which  in  a  settled  country 
could  not  generally  be  gratified  except  by  eating  domestic 
animals.  But  it  is  not  so  easy  to  understand,  first,  why 
in  spite  of  these  influences  certain  sacrifices  retained  their 
old  sacrosanct  character,  and  in  many  cases  became  so 
holy  that  men  were  forbidden  to  touch  or  eat  of  them  at 
all ;  and,  second,  why  it  is  this  class  of  sacrifices  to  which  a 
special  piacular  efficacy  is  assigned. 

In  looking  further  into  this  matter  w^e  must  distinguish 
between  the  sacred  domestic  animals  of  pastoral  tribes — 
the  milk -givers,  wdiose  kinship  witli  men  rests  on  the 
principle  of  fosterage — and  those  other  sacred  animals  of 
wild  or  half-domesticated  kinds,  such  as  the  dove  and  the 
swine,  which  even  in  the  later  days  of  Semitic  heathenism 


336  TWO    KINDS    OF  lect.  x. 

were  surrounded  by  strict  taboos,  and  looked  upon  as  in 
some  sense  partakers  of  a  divine  nature.  The  latter  are 
undoubtedly  the  older  class  of  sacred  beings ;  for  observa- 
tion of  savage  life  in  all  parts  of  the  world  shows  that  the 
belief  in  sacred  animals,  akin  to  families  of  men,  attains  its 
highest  development  in  tribes  which  have  not  yet  learned 
to  breed  cattle  and  live  on  their  milk.  Totemism  pure 
and  simple  has  its  home  among  races  like  the  Australians 
and  tlie  North  American  Indians,  and  seems  always  to 
lose  ground  after  the  introduction  of  pastoral  life.  It 
would  appear  that  the  notion  of  kinship  with  milk-giving 
animals  through  fosterage  has  been  one  of  the  most 
powerful  agencies  in  breaking  up  the  old  totem-religions, 
just  as  a  systematic  practice  of  adoption  between  men  was 
a  potent  agency  in  breaking  up  the  old  exclusive  system 
of  clans.  As  the  various  totem  clans  began  to  breed 
cattle  and  live  on  their  milk,  they  transferred  to  their 
herds  the  notions  of  sanctity  and  kinship  which  formerly 
Ijelonged  to  species  of  wild  animals,  and  thus  the  way  was 
at  once  opened  for  the  formation  of  religious  and  political 
communities  larger  than  the  old  totem  kins.  In  almost 
all  ancient  nations  in  the  pastoral  and  agricultural  stage, 
the  chief  associations  of  the  great  deities  are  with  the  milk- 
giving  animals  ;  and  it  is  these  animals,  the  ox,  the  sheep, 
the  goat,  or  in  Arabia  the  camel,  that  appear  as  victims  in 
the  public  and  national  worship.  But  experience  shows 
that  primitive  religious  beliefs  are  practically  indestructible, 
except  by  the  destruction  of  the  race  in  which  they  are 
ingrained,  and  thus  we  find  that  the  new  ideas  of  what  I 
may  call  pastoral  religion  overlaid  the  old  notions,  but  did 
not  extinguish  them.  For  example,  tlie  Astarte  of  the 
Northern  Semites  is  essentially  a  goddess  of  flocks  and 
herds,  whose  symbol  and  sacred  animal  is  the  cow,  or 
(among   the   sheep  -  rearing   tribes   of    the    Syro  -  Arabian 


LECT.  X.  SACRED    ANIMALS.  337 

desert)  the  ewe.^  But  this  pastoral  worship  appears  to 
have  come  on  the  top  of  certain  older  faiths,  in  which  the 
goddess  of  one  kindred  of  men  was  associated  with  fish, 
and  tliat  of  another  kindred  with  the  dove.  These 
creatures,  accordingly,  though  no  longer  prominent  in 
ritual,  were  still  held  sacred  and  surrounded  by  taboos, 
implying  that  they  were  of  divine  nature  and  akin  to 
the  goddess  herself.  The  very  fact  that  they  were  not 
regularly  sacrificed,  and,  tlierefore,  not  regularly  eaten 
even  in  religious  feasts,  tended  to  preserve  their  antique 
sanctity  long  after  the  sacrificial  flesh  of  beeves  and  sheep 
had  sunk  almost  to  the  rank  of  ordinary  food ;  and  thus, 
as  we  have  seen  in  considering  the  case  of  the  mystic 
sacrifices  of  the  Roman  Empire,  the  rare  and  exceptional 
rites,  in  which  the  victim  was  chosen  from  a  class  of 
animals  ordinarily  tabooed  as  human  food,  retained  even 
in  later  paganism  a  sacramental  significance,  almost 
absolutely  identical  with  that  which  belonged  to  tlie 
oldest  sacrifices.  It  was  still  felt  that  the  victim  was 
of  a  divine  kind,  and  that,  in  partaking  of  its  flesh  and 
blood,  the  worshippers  enjoyed  a  veritable  communion 
with  the  divine  life.  That  to  such  sacrifices  there  was 
ascribed  a  special  cathartic  and  consecrating  virtue  requires 
no  explanation,  for  how  can  the  impurity  of  sin  be  better 
expelled  than  by  a  draught  of  sacred  life  ?  and  how  can 
man  be  brought  nearer  to  his  god  than  by  physically 
absorbing  a  particle  of  the  divine  nature  ? 

It  is,  however,  to  be  noted  that  piacula  of  this  kind,  in 
which  atonement  is  eflccted  by  the  use  of  an  exceptional 
victim  of  sacred  kind,  do  not  rise  into  prominence  till  the 
national  religions  of  the  Semites  fall  into  decay.  The 
public  piacular  sacrifices  of  the  independent  Semitic 
states  appear,  so  far   as    our   scanty  information  goes,  to 

>  Supra,  p.  292. 
Y 


338  MYSTIC 


LECT.   X. 


have  been  mainly  drawn  from  the  same  kinds  of  domestic 
animals  as  supplied  the  ordinary  sacrifices,  except  where 
an  exceptional  emergency  demanded  a  human  victim. 
Among  the  Hebrews,  in  particular,  there  is  no  trace  of 
anything  answering  to  the  later  mystic  sacrifices  up  to  the 
time  of  the  captivity.  At  this  epoch,  when  the  national 
religion  appeared  to  have  utterly  broken  down,  and  the 
judgment  of  those  who  were  not  upheld  by  the  faith  of 
the  prophets  was  that  "  Jehovah  had  forsaken  His  land,"  ^ 
all  manner  of  strange  sacrifices  of  unclean  creatures — the 
swine,  the  dog,  the  mouse  and  other  vermin — began  to 
become  popular,  and  were  deemed  to  have  a  peculiar 
purifying  and  consecrating  power.^  The  creatures  chosen 
for  these  sacrifices  are  such  as  were  unclean  in  the  first 
degree,  and  surrounded  by  strong  taboos  of  the  kind  which 
in  heathenism  imply  that  the  animal  is  regarded  as  divine ; 
and  in  fact  the  sacrifices  of  vermin  described  in  the  Book 
of  Isaiah  have  their  counterpart  in  the  contemporary 
worship  of  all  kinds  of  vermin  described  by  Ezekiel.^ 
Both  rites  are  evidently  part  of  a  single  superstition, 
the  sacrifice  being  a  mystical  communion  in  the  body 
and  blood  of  a  divine  animal.  Here,  therefore,  we  have 
a  clear  case  of  the  re-emergence  into  the  light  of  day  of 
a  cult  of  the  most  primitive  totem  type,  which  had  been 
banished  for  centuries  from  public  religion,  but  must  have 
been  kept  alive  in  obscure  circles  of  private  or  local 
superstition,  and  sprang  up  again  on  the  ruins  of  the 
national  faith,  like  some  noxious  weed  in  the  courts  of  a 
deserted  temple.  But  while  the  ritual  and  its  interpreta- 
ion  are  still  quite  primitive,  the  resuscitated  totem 
mysteries    have    this   great    difference  from   their   ancient 

1  Ezek.  viii.  12. 

-  Isa.  Ixv.  3  .sv/r/.,  Ixvi.  3,  17  ;  see  above,  p.  273  sq.,  p.  325,  note  2. 

'  Ezek.  viii.  10. 


LECT.  X.  PIACULA.  339 

models,  that  they  are  no  longer  the  exclusive  possession 
of  particular  kins,  but  are  practised,  by  men  who  desert 
the  religion  of  their  birth,  as  means  of  initiation  into  a 
new  religious  brotherhood,  based  not  on  natural  kinship, 
but  on  mystical  participation  in  the  divine  life  held  fortli 
in  the  sacramental  sacrifice.  From  this  point  of  view  the 
obscure  rites  described  by  the  prophets  have  a  vastly 
greater  importance  than  has  been  commonly  recognised  ; 
they  mark  the  first  appearance  in  Semitic  history  of  the 
tendency  to  found  religious  societies  on  voluntary  associa- 
tion and  mystic  initiation,  instead  of  natural  kinship  and 
nationality.  This  tendency  was  not  confined  to  the 
Hebrews,  nor  did  it  reach  its  chief  development  among 
them.  The  causes  which  produced  a  resuscitation  of  obsolete 
mysteries  among  the  Jews  were  at  work  at  the  same  period 
among  all  the  Northern  Semites ;  for  everywhere  the  old 
national  deities  had  shown  themselves  powerless  to  resist 
the  gods  of  Assyria  and  Babylon.  And  among  these 
nations  the  tendency  to  fall  back  for  help  on  primitive 
superstitions  was  not  held  in  check,  as  it  was  among  the 
Hebrews,  by  the  counter -influence  of  the  Prophets  and 
the  Law.  From  this  period,  therefore,  we  may  date  with 
great  probability  the  first  rise  of  the  mystical  cults  which 
played  so  large  a  part  in  the  later  developments  of 
ancient  paganism,  and  spread  their  influence  over  the 
whole  Graeco-Eoman  world.  Most  of  these  cults  appear 
to  have  had  their  origin  among  the  Northern  Semites,  or 
in  the  parts  of  Asia  Minor  that  fell  under  the  empire  of 
the  Assyrians  and  Babylonians.  The  leading  feature  that 
distinguishes  them  from  the  old  public  cults,  with  wliich 
they  entered  into  competition,  is  that  they  were  not  based 
on  the  principle  of  nationality,  but  sought  recruits  from 
men  of  every  race  who  were  willing  to  accept  initiation 
through  the  mystic  sacraments ;  and  in  pursuance  of  this 


340  ATONEMENT  BY  lect.  x. 

object  they  carried  on  a  missionary  propaganda  in  all  parts 
of  the  Eoman  Empire,  in  a  way  quite  alien  to  the  spirit 
of  national  religion.  The  nature  of  their  sacramental  sacri- 
fices, so  far  as  it  is  known  to  us,  indicates  that  they  were 
of  a  like  origin  with  the  Hebrew  superstitions  described 
by  Isaiah ;  they  used  strange  victims,  invoked  the  gods  by 
animal  names,  and  taught  the  initiated  to  acknowledge 
kinship  with  the  same  animals.-^  To  pursue  this  subject 
further  would  carry  us  beyond  the  limits  of  our  present 
task ;  for  a  full  discussion  of  mystical  sacrifices  cannot 
be  confined  to  the  Semitic  field.  These  sacrifices,  as  we 
have  seen,  lie  aside  from  the  main  development  of  the 
national  religions  of  the  Semites,  and  they  acquire  public 
importance  only  after  the  collapse  of  the  national  systems. 
In  later  times  they  were  much  sought  after,  and  were 
held  to  have  a  peculiar  efficacy  in  purging  away  siu,  and 
bringing  man  into  living  union  with  the  gods.  But 
their  atoning  efficacy  proceeds  on  quite  different  lines 
from  that  of  the  recognised  piacular  rites  of  national 
religion.  In  the  latter  the  sinner  seeks  reconciliation 
with  the  national  god  whom  he  has  offended,  but  in 
mystic  religion  he  takes  refuge  from  the  divine  wrath 
by  incorporating  himself  in  a  new  religious  community. 
Something  of  the  same  kind  takes  place  in  more  primitive 
society,  when  an  outlaw,  who  has  been  banished  from  the 
social  and  religious  fellowship  of  his  clan  for  shedding 
kindred  blood,  is  received  by  the  covenant  of  adoption 
into  another  clan.  Here  also  the  act  of  adoption,  which 
is  a  religious  as  well  as  a  civil  rite,  is  in  so  far  an  act 
of  atonement  that  the  outlaw  has  again  a  god  to  receive 
his  worship  and  his  prayers ;  but  he  is  not  reconciled  to 
the  god  of  his  former  worship,  for  it  is  only  in  a  some- 
what advanced  stage  of  polytheism  that  acceptance  by  one 

^  Porph.,  De  Ahst.  iv.  16,  compared  with  Fihrisf,  p.  326,  1.  25  sq. 


LKCT.  X.  FOREIGN   RITES.  341 

god  puts  a  man  right  with  the  gods  as  a  whole.  Among 
the  Greeks,  where  the  gods  formed  a  sort  of  family  circle, 
and  were  accessible  to  one  another's  influence,  the  outlaw, 
like  Orestes,  wanders  about  in  exile,  till  he  can  find  a  god 
willing  to  receive  him  and  act  as  his  sponsor  with  the 
other  deities ;  and  here,  therefore,  as  in  the  mystical  rites 
of  the  Semites,  the  ceremony  of  purification  from  blood- 
shed is  essentially  a  ceremony  of  initiation  into  the  cult 
of  some  god  who,  like  the  Apollo  of  Troezen,  makes  it 
his  business  to  receive  suppliants.  But  among  the  older 
Semites  there  was  no  kinship  or  friendship  between  the 
gods  of  adjacent  tribes  or  nations,  and  there  was  no  way 
of  reconciliation  with  the  national  god  through  the  media- 
tion of  a  third  party,  so  that  all  atoning  sacrifices  were 
necessarily  offered  to  the  national  god  himself,  and  drawni, 
like  ordinary  sacrifices,  from  the  class  of  domestic  animals 
appropriated  to  his  worship. 

In  the  oldest  stage  of  pastoral  religion,  when  the  tribal 
herd  possessed  inviolate  sanctity,  and  every  sheep  or  camel 
— according  as  the  tribe  consisted  of  shepherds  or  camel- 
herds — was  regarded  as  a  kinsman,  there  was  no  occasion 
and  no  place  for  a  special  class  of  atoning  sacrifices.  The 
relations  between  the  god  and  his  worshippers  were 
naturally  as  good  and  intimate  as  possible,  for  they  were 
based  on  the  strongest  of  all  ties,  the  tie  of  kinship.  To 
secure  that  this  natural  good  understanding  should  continue 
unimpaired,  it  was  only  necessary  that  the  congenital  bond 
of  kinship  should  not  wear  out,  but  continue  strong  and 
fresh.  And  this  was  provided  for  by  periodical  sacrifices, 
of  the  type  described  by  Nilus,  in  which  a  particle  of  the 
sacred  life  of  the  tribe  was  distributed,  between  the  god 
and  his  worshippers,  in  the  sacramental  flesh  arid  blood  of 
an  animal  of  the  holy  stock  of  the  clan.  To  make  the 
sacrifice  effective   it   was  only  necessary  that   the  victim 


342  HUMAN 


LECT.    X. 


should  be  perfect  and  without  fault — a  point  which  is 
strongly  insisted  upon  in  all  ancient  sacrifice — i.e.  that 
the  sacred  life  should  be  completely  and  normally 
embodied  in  it.  In  the  later  ages  of  antiquity  there  was  a 
very  general  belief — the  origin  of  which  will  be  explained 
as  we  proceed  —  that  in  strictness  the  oldest  rituals 
demanded  a  human  victim,  and  that  animal  sacrifices  were 
substitutes  for  the  life  of  a  man.  But  in  the  oldest  times 
there  could  be  no  reason  for  thinking  a  man's  life  better 
than  that  of  a  camel  or  a  sheep  as  a  vehicle  of  sacramental 
communion  ;  indeed,  if  we  may  judge  from  modern  examples 
of  that  primitive  habit  of  thought  which  lies  at  the  root  of 
Semitic  sacrifice,  the  animal  life  would  probably  be  deemed 
purer  and  more  perfect  than  that  of  man. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  is  every  reason  to  think  that 
even  at  this  early  stage  certain  impious  crimes,  notably 
murder  within  the  kin,  were  expiated  by  the  death  of  the 
offender.  But  the  death  of  such  a  criminal  cannot  with 
any  justice  be  called  a  sacrifice.  Its  object  was  simply  to 
eliminate  the  impious  person  from  the  society  whose 
sanctity  he  had  violated,  and  outlawry  was  accepted  as  an 
alternative  to  execution. 

As '  time  went  on  the  idea  of  the  full  kinship  of  men 
with  their  cattle  began  to  break  down.  The  Saracens  of 
Mlus  killed  and  ate  their  camels  in  time  of  huncrer,  but 
we  may  be  sure  that  they  would  not  in  similar  circum- 
stances have  eaten  one  another.  Thus  even  in  a  society 
where  the  flesh  of  the  tribal  camel  was  not  ordinary  food, 
and  where  private  slaughter  was  forbidden,  a  camel's  life 
was  no  longer  as  sacred  as  that  of  a  man  ;  it  had  begun  to 
be  recognised  that  human  life,  or  rather  the  life  of  a  tribes- 
man, was  a  thing  of  unique  sanctity.  At  the  same  time 
the  old  forms  of  sacrifice  were  retained,  and  the  tradition 
of  their  old  meaning  cannot  have  been  lost,  for  the  ritual 


LFXT.  X.  SACRIFICE.  343 

forms  were  too  plainly  significant  to  bo  misinterpreted. 
In  short,  tlie  life  of  a  camel,  which  no  longer  liad  the  full 
value  of  a  tribesman's  life  for  ordinary  purposes,  was 
treated  as  a  tribesman's  life  when  it  was  presented  at  the 
altar ;  so  that  here  we  have  already  a  beginning  of  the  idea 
that  the  victim  qua  victim  possesses  a  sacrosanct  character, 
which  does  not  belong  to  it  merely  in  virtue  of  its  natural 
kind.  But  now  also,  let  it  be  noted,  it  is  expressly  attested 
that  the  sacrificial  camel  is  regarded  as  the  substitute  for 
a  human  victim.  The  favourite  victims  of  the  Saracens 
were  young  and  beautiful  captives,  but  if  these  were  not 
to  be  had  they  contented  themselves  with  a  white  and 
faultless  camel.  As  to  the  veracity  of  this  account  there 
is  no  question  ;  Nilus's  own  son,  Theodulus,  when  a  captive 
in  the  hands  of  these  barbarians,  escaped  being  sacrificed 
only  by  tlie  accident  that,  on  the  appointed  morning,  his 
captors  did  not  awake  till  the  sun  rose,  and  the  lawful  hour 
for  the  rite  was  past ;  and  there  are  well-authenticated 
instances  of  the  sacrifice  of  captives  to  Al-'Ozza  by  the 
Lakhmite  king  of  Al-Hira  at  least  a  century  later.^ 

It  is  true  that  in  these  cases  the  victims  are  aliens  and 
not  tribesmen,  as  in  strictness  the  sense  of  the  ritual 
requires  ;  but  the  older  Semites,  when  they  had  recourse  to 
human  sacrifice,  were  more  strictly  logical,  and  held  with 
rigour  to  tlie  fundamental  principle  tliat  the  life  of  the 
victim  must  be  a  kindred  life.^  Tlie  modification  accepted 
by  the  Saracens  was  one  for  which  there  was  the  strongest 
motive,  and  accordingly  all  over  the  world  we  find  cases 
of  human  sacrifice  in  which  an  alien  is  substituted  for  a 


J  Noldokc's  Tahari,  p.  171  (Procop.,  Peru.  ii.  28  ;  Laiul,  Anecd.  iii.  247). 

*  See,  for  the  Hebrews,  Gen.  xxii.;  2  Kings  xxi.  6  ;  Micah  vi.  7  ;  for  the 
Moabites,  2  Kings  iii.  27  ;  for  the  Phoenicians,  Philo  Byblius  in  Fr.  Hist. 
Gr.  iii.  570  (Eus.,  Pr.  Ev.  156  D)  ;  Porph.,  De  Abst.  ii.  5C  ;  for  the  Cartha- 
ginians, Porpb.,  ibid.  ii.  27,  and  Diodorus,  xx.  14  ;  for  the  Syrians,  Dea 
i^yr.  Iviii. ;  for  the  Babylonians,  2  Kings  xvii.  31. 


344  HUMAN 


1.ECT.   X. 


tribesman.  This  was  not  done  in  accordance  with  any 
change  in  the  meaning  of  the  ritual,  for  originally  the 
substitution  was  felt  to  be  a  fraud  on  the  deity;  thus 
Diodorus  tells  us  that  the  Carthaginians,  in  a  time  of 
trouble,  felt  that  their  god  was  angry  because  slave  boys 
had  been  privily  substituted  for  the  children  of  their  best 
families ;  and  elsewhere  we  find  that  it  is  considered 
necessary  to  make  believe  that  the  victim  is  a  tribesman, 
or  even,  as  in  the  human  sacrifices  of  the  Mexicans,  to 
dress  and  treat  him  as  the  representative  of  the  deity  to 
whom  he  is  to  be  offered.  Perhaps  something  of  this  kind 
was  in  the  mind  of  Nilus's  Saracens  when  they  drank  with 
prisoners  destined  to  death,  and  so  admitted  them  to  boon 
fellowship.-^ 

From  a  purely  abstract  point  of  view  it  seems  plausible 
enough  that  the  Saracens,  who  accepted  an  alien  as  a 
substitute  for  a  tribesman,  might  also  accept  a  camel  as 
a  substitute  for  a  man.  The  plan  of  substituting  an 
offering  which  can  be  more  readily  procured  or  better 
spared,  for  the  more  costly  victim  which  traditional 
ritual  demands,  was  largely  applied  throughout  antiquity, 
and  belongs  to  the  general  system  of  make  -  believe  by 
which  early  nations,  that  are  entirely  governed  by  regard 
for     precedents,    habitually    get    over    difficulties    in    the 

^  Nilus,  p.  66,  where,  however,  the  slaughter  is  not  formally  a  sacrifice. 
The  narrative  represents  the  offer  of  drink  as  mere  mockery,  but  it  is 
difficult  to  reconcile  this  with  known  Arabian  custom  ;  see  above,  p.  252. 
A  more  serious  attempt  to  adopt  Theodfihis  into  the  Saracen  community 
seems  to  have  been  made  after  his  ])rovidential  escape  from  death  ;  he  ^^as 
invited  to  eat  unclean  things  and  sport  with  the  women  (p.  117).  The 
combination  is  significant,  and  as  f^iaf>o;pa.yi7\i  must  refer  to  the  eating  of 
idolatrous  meats,  presumably  camel's  flesh, — which  Symeon  Stylites  forbade 
to  his  Arab  converts, — the  question  arises  whether  ywai^]  rrp/xfrai^uv  has  not 
also  a  reference  to  some  religious  practice,  and  whetlier  Wellhausen,  p.  40, 
has  not  been  too  hasty  in  supposing  that  the  orgies  of  the  Arabian  Venus 
renounced  by  the  converts  just  mentioned  are  mere  rlietorical  orgies ;  cf. 
Kinship,  p.  295. 


i.F.CT.  X.  SACRIFICE.  345 

strict  carrying  out  of  traditional  rules.  If  a  Roman 
rite  called  for  a  stag  as  victim,  and  a  stag  could  not 
be  had,  a  sheep  was  substituted  and  feigned  to  be  a  stag 
(cervaria  oris),  and  so  forth.  The  thing  was  really  a  fraud, 
but  one  to  which  the  gods  were  polite  enougli  to  shut 
their  eyes  rather  than  see  the  whole  ceremony  fail.  But 
in  the  particular  case  before  us  it  is  difficult  to  believe 
that  the  camel  was  substituted  for  a  man,  and  ultimately 
for  a  tribesman.  In  that  case  the  ritual  of  the  camel- 
sacrifice  would  have  been  copied  from  that  of  human 
sacrifice,  but  in  reality  this  was  not  so.  The  camel  was 
eaten,  but  the  human  victim  was  burned,  after  the  blood 
had  been  poured  out  as  a  libation,^  and  there  can  be  no 
question  that  the  former  is  the  more  primitive  rite.       I 

^  This  appears  from  what  we  rend  of  tlie  preparations  for  the  sacrifice  of 
Theodulus,  among  which  are  mentioned  frankincense  (tlie  accompaniment 
of  fire-offerings)  and  a  bowl  for  the  libation,  p.  110  ;  and,  at  p.  113,  Thcodiilus 
prays:  "Let  not  my  blood  be  made  a  libation  to  demons,  nor  let  unclean 
spirits  be  made  glad  with  the  sweet  smoke  of  my  flesh."  See  Wellhausen, 
p.  113,  who  conjectures  that  in  Arabia  human  sacrifices  Avere  generally 
burned,  citing  Yacut,  iv.  425,  who  tells  that  every  clan  of  Rabi'a  gave  a 
son  to  the  god  Moharric,  "the  burner,"  at  Salman  (in  'Irac,  on  the  pilgrim 
road  from  Cufa).  Noldeke,  in  ZDMG.  xli.  712,  doubts  whether  the  reference 
is  to  human  sacrifice  ;  for  Yaciit  {i.e.  Ibu  al-Kalbi)  presently  cites  examples 
of  men  of  ditfereut  clans  called  "sons  of  Moharric,"  which  may  imply  that 
the  sons  were  not  sacrificed,  but  consecrated  as  children  of  the  god.  This, 
however,  is  so  peculiar  an  institution  for  Arabia  that  it  still  remains 
probable  that  the  consecration  was  a  substitute  for  sacrifice.  At  Salman, 
in  the  neighbourhood  of  Hira,  we  are  in  tlie  ngion  of  the  human  sacrifices 
of  the  Lakhniite  kings.  And  these  were  probably  burnt-oITerings  ;  cf.  the 
legend  of  the  holocaust  of  one  hundred  prisoners  by  'Amr  b.  Hind,  Kumil, 
p.  97.  Hence  this  king  is  said  to  have  been  called  Moharric  ;  but,  as 
Noldeke  observes  [Ghassan.  Fihsten  [1887],  p.  7),  Jloharric  without  the 
article  is  hardly  a  mere  epithet  {lacab),  and  I  apprehend  that  the  Lakhmite 
family  was  called  "the  family  of  Moharric"  after  their  god,  presumably 
Lucifer,  the  morning  star,  who  afterwards  became  feminine  as  al-'Ozza 
{supra,  p.  57,  note  1).  Tlie  Ghassanid  princes  of  the  house  of  Jafna  were 
also  called  "the  family  of  Moharric,"  Ibn  Cot.,  p.  314  ;  Ibn  Dor.,  p.  259, 
and  here  the  tradition  is  that  their  ancestor  was  the  first  Arab  who  burned 
his  enemies  in  their  encampment.  This,  liowever,  is  obviously  a  form  of 
/lirem,  and  must,  I  take  it,  be  a  religious  act.  For  tlie  "family"  {dl) 
of  a  god,  as  meaning  his  worshippers,  see  Kinship,  p.  258. 


346  HUMAN 


LECT.   X. 


apprehend,  therefore,  that  human  sacrifice  is  not  more 
ancient  than  the  sacrifice  of  sacred  animals,  and  that 
the  prevalent  belief  of  ancient  heathenism,  that  animal 
victims  are  an  imperfect  substitute  for  a  human  life, 
arose  by  a  false  inference  from  traditional  forms  of 
ritual  that  had  ceased  to  be  understood.  In  the  oldest 
rituals  the  victim's  life  is  manifestly  treated  as  sacred, 
and  in  some  rites,  as  we  have  seen  in  our  examination 
of  the  Attic  Buphonia,  the  idea  that  the  slaughter  is 
really  a  murder,  i.e.  a  shedding  of  kindred  blood,  was 
expressed  down  to  quite  a  late  date.  When  the  full 
kinship  of  animals  with  men  was  no  longer  recognised 
in  ordinary  life,  all  this  became  unintelligible,  and  was 
explained  by  the  doctrine  that  at  the  altar  the  victim 
took  the  place  of  a  man. 

This  doctrine  appears  all  over  the  ancient  world  in 
connection  with  atoning  sacrifices,  and  indeed  the  false 
inference  on  which  it  rests  was  one  that  could  not  fail 
to  be  drawn  wherever  the  old  forms  of  sacrifice  had  been 
shaped  at  a  time  when  cattle  were  revered  as  kindred 
beings.  And  this  appears  to  have  been  the  case  in  the 
beginnings  of  every  pastoral  society.  Accordingly,  to 
cite  but  a  few  instances,  the  notion  that  animal  sacrifice 
is  accepted  in  lieu  of  an  older  sacrifice  of  the  life  of  a 
man  appears  among  the  Hebrews,  in  the  story  of  Isaac's 
sacrifice,^  among  the  Phoenicians,^  among  the  Egyptians, 
where  the  victim  was  marked  with  a  seal  bearing  the 
image  of  a  man  bound,  and  with  a  sword  at  his  throat,^ 
and  also  among  the  Greeks,  the  Eomans,  and  many  other 
nations.*     As  soon,  however,  as  it  came  to  be  held  that 

1  Gen.  xxii.  13  ;  cf.  Lev.  xvii.  11.  ^  Porph.,  De  Abst.  iv.  If). 

'  Plut,  Is.  et  08.  xxxi. 

*  See  the  examples  in  Porpli.,  De  Abst.  ii.  54  sqq.,  and  for  the  Romans 
Ovid,  Fa>iti,  vi.  162.  We  have  had  before  us  Greek  rites  where  the  victim  is 
disguised  as  a  man  ;  but  conversely  human  sacrifices  are  often  dressed  up  as 


LECT.  X.  SACRIFICE.  347 

cattle  were  merely  substitutes,  and  that  the  full  sense  of 
the  sacrifice  was  not  brought  out  without  an  actual  human 
victim,  it  was  naturally  inferred  that  the  original  form 
of  offering  was  more  potent,  and  was  indicated  on  all 
occasions  of  special  gravity.  Wherever  we  find  the 
doctrine  of  substitution  of  animal  life  for  tliat  of  man, 
we  find  also  examples  of  actual  human  sacrifice,  some- 
times confined  to  seasons  of  extreme  peril,  and  sometimes 
practised  periodically  at  solemn  annual  rites.^ 

I  apprehend  that  this  is  the  point  from  which  the 
special  development  of  piacular  sacrifices,  and  the  distinc- 
tion between  them  and  ordinary  sacrifices,  takes  its  start. 
It  was  impossible  that  the  sacrificial  customs  should  con- 
tinue unmodified  where  the  victim  was  held  to  represent 
a  man  and  a  tribesman,  for  even  savages  commonly  refuse 
to  eat  their  own  kinsfolk,  and  to  growing  civilisation  the 
idea  that  the  gods  had  ordained  meals  of  human  flesh,  or 
of  flesh  that  was  as  sacred  as  that  of  a  man,  was  too 
repulsive  to  be  long  retained.     But  when  I  say  "  repulsive," 

animals,  or  said  to  represent  animals  :  an  example,  from  the  worship  at 
Hierapolis-Bamliyce,  is  found  in  Dea  Syria,  Iviii.,  wliere  fathers  sacrificinf» 
their  children  say  that  they  are  not  children  but  beeves. 

^  Examples  of  human  sacrifices,  many  of  wliich  subsisted  within  the 
Eoman  Empire  down  to  the  time  of  Hadrian,  are  collected  by  Porphyry, 
vt  supra,  on  whom  Ensebius,  Prap.  Ev.  iv.  16,  Laus  ConM.  xiii.  7, 
depends.  See  also  Clem.  Alex.,  Coh.  ad  Oentes,  p.  27  (p.  36,  Potter); 
cf.  Hermann,  Gr.  Alth.  ii.  §  27.  In  what  follows  I  confine  myself  to  the 
Semites  ;  it  may  therefore  be  noted  that,  in  antiquity  generally,  human 
victims  were  buried,  burned,  or  cast  into  the  sea  or  into  a  river  (cf.  Jlann- 
hardt's  essay  on  the  Lityerses  legend).  Yet  indications  survive  that  they 
were  originally  sacrifices  of  communion,  and  as  such  were  tasted  by  the 
worshippers  :  notably  in  the  most  famous  case  of  all,  the  human  sacrifice 
offered  in  Arcadia  to  Zeus  Lycaus — the  wolf-god — where  a  frugment  of  tlie 
exla  was  placed  among  the  portions  of  sacrificial  flesh  derived  from  other 
victims  that  were  offered  along  with  the  human  sacrifice,  and  the  man 
who  tasted  it  was  believed  to  become  a  were- wolf  (Plato,  Rep.  viii.  15, 
p.  565  D  ;  Pausanias,  viii.  2). 

Of  the  human  sacrifices  of  rude  peoples  tliose  of  the  Mexicans  arc  perhaps 
the  most  instructive,  for  in  them  the  theanthropic  character  of  the  victim 
comes  out  most  clearly. 


348  HUMAN 


LECT.   X. 


I  put  the  matter  rather  in  the  light  in  which  it  appears  to 
us,  than  in  that  wherein  it  presented  itself  to  the  first  men 
who  had  scruples  about  cannibalism.  Primarily  the  horror 
of  eating  human  flesh  was  no  doubt  superstitious ;  it  was 
felt  to  be  dangerous  to  eat  so  sacrosanct  a  thing,  even  with 
all  the  precautions  of  religious  ceremonial.  Accordingly, 
in  human  sacrifices,  and  also  in  such  other  offerincfs  as 
continued  to  be  performed  with  a  ritual  simulating  human 
sacrifice,  the  sacrificial  meal  tended  to  fall  out  of  use; 
while,  on  the  other  hand,  where  the  sacrificial  meal  was 
retained,  the  tendency  was  to  drop  such  features  in  the 
ritual  as  suggested  the  disgusting  idea  of  cannibalism.^ 
And  so  the  apparent  paradox  is  explained,  that  precisely  in 
those  sacrifices  in  which  the  victim  most  fully  retained  its 
original  theanthropic  character,  and  was  therefore  most 
efficacious  as  a  vehicle  of  atonement,  the  primitive  idea  of 
atonement  by  communion  in  the  sacred  flesh  and  blood 
was  most  completely  disguised.  The  modifications  in  the 
form  of  ritual  that  ensued,  when  sacrifices  of  a  certain 
class  were  no  longer  eaten,  can  be  best  observed  by 
taking  the  case  of  actual  human  sacrifice  and  noting 
how  other  sacrifices  of  equivalent  significance  follow  its 
model. 

Whether  the  custom  of  actually  eating  the  flesh  survived 
in  historical  times  in  any  case  of  human  sacrifice  is  more 
than  doubtful,"  and  even  in  the  case  of  animal  piacula — 

^  Of  course  neither  tendency  was  consistently  carried  out  in  every  detail 
of  ritual  ;  there  remains  enough  that  is  common  to  honorific  and  piacular 
sacrifice  to  enable  us  to  trace  them  Lack  to  a  common  source. 

-  According  to  Mohammedan  accounts  the  Harrauians  in  the  Middle  Ages 
annually  sacrificed,  an  infant,  and  boiling  down  its  flesh,  baked  it  into  cakes, 
of  which  only  freeborn  men  were  allowed  to  partake  {Fihrid,  p.  323, 1.  6sqq.; 
of.  Chwolsohn's  Excursus  on  Human  Sacrifice,  vol.  ii.  p.  142).  But  in  regard 
to  the  secret  mysteries  of  a  forbidden  religion,  such  as  Syrian  heathenism 
was  in  Arabian  times,  it  is  always  doubtful  how  far  we  can  trust  a  hostile 
narrator,  who,  even  if  he  did  not  merely  reproduce  popular  fictions,  might 
easily  take  for  a  real  human  sacrifice  what  was  only  the  mystic  offering  of  a 


LECT.  X.  SACRIFICE.  349 

apart  from  those  of  mystic  type,  in  which  the  idea  of 
initiation  into  a  new  religion  was  involved — the  sacrificial 
meal  is  generally  wanting  or  confined  to  the  priests.  The 
custom  of  drinking  the  blood,  or  at  least  of  sprinkling  it 
on  the  worshippers,  may  have  been  kept  up  longer;  there 
is  some  probability  that  it  was  observed  in  the  human 
sacrifices  of  Nilus's  Saracens  ;^  and  the  common  Arabian 
belief  that  the  blood  of  kings,  and  perhaps  also  of  other  men 
of  noble  descent,  is  a  cure  for  hydrophobia  and  demoniacal 
possession,  seems  to  be  a  reminiscence  of  blood-drinking 
in  connection  with  human  sacrifice,  for  the  Greeks  in  like 
manner,  who  ascribed  epilepsy  to  demoniacal  possession, 
sought  to  cure  it  by  piacular  offerings  and  purifications 
with  blood.' 

theanthropic  animal.  The  new-born  infant  corresponds  to  the  Arabian /ara', 
offered  while  its  flesh  was  still  like  glue,  and  to  the  Hebrew  piaculum  of  a 
sucking  lamb  in  1  Sam.  vii.  9. 

'  The  reason  for  thinking  this  is  that  on  the  Arabian  mode  of  sacrifice  a 
bowl  was  not  required  to  convey  the  blood  to  the  deity,  while  it  would  be 
necessary  if  the  blood  was  drank  by  the  worsliippers  or  sprinkled  upon  them. 
It  is  true  that  the  narrative  speaks  also  of  tlie  preparation  of  a  libation — 
whether  of  water  or  of  wine  does  not  appear — but  tliis  in  the  Arabian  ritual 
can  hardly  be  more  than  a  vehicle  for  the  more  potent  blood,  just  as  tlie 
blood  was  mixed  with  water  in  Greek  sacrifices  to  heroes.  Water  as  a 
vehicle  for  sacrificial  ashes  appears  in  the  Hebrew  ritual  of  the  red  heifer 
(Numb.  xix.  9),  and  is  prescribed  as  a  vehicle  for  the  blood  of  lustration  in 
Lev.  xiv.  5  sq.  In  the  legends  cited  in  the  next  note  we  find  the  notion 
tliat  if  the  blood  of  a  human  victim  touches  the  ground,  vengeance  will  be 
taken  for  it.  That  the  drinking  of  human  blood,  e.fj.  from  an  enemy  slain 
in  battle,  was  a  Saracen  practice,  is  attested  by  Ammianus  and  Procopius 
(see  Kinship,  p.  284  sqq.)  ;  and  the  anecdote  given  by  "Wellh.,  p.  120,  from 
A(jh.  xii.  144,  where  a  husband,  unable  to  save  his  wife  from  the  enemy, 
kills  her,  anoints  himself  with  her  blood,  and  fights  till  he  is  slain,  illustrates 
the  significance  which  the  Arabs  attached  to  human  blood  as  a  vehicle  of 
communion. 

-  Hippocrates,  cd.  Littrd,  vi.  362.  The  evidence  for  this  Arabian  supersti- 
tion is  collected  by  Freytag  in  his  notes  to  the  IJamaMt,  ii.  583,  a7ul  by 
"Wellh.,  p.  142.  It  consists  in  poetical  and  proverbial  allusions,  to  which  may 
be  added  a  verse  in  Mas'udi,  iii.  193,  and  in  a  legend  from  the  mythical 
story  of  Queen  Zabba  (Agh.  xiv.  74  ;  Tabari,  i.  760  ;  Maidfini,  i.  205  sqq.), 
where  a  king  is  slain  by  ojjening  the  veins  of  his  arms,  and  the  blood,  to  be 
used  as  a  magical  medicine,  is  gathered  in  a  bowl.     Not  a  drop  must  fall  on 


350  DISPOSAL   OF  LECT.  X. 

When  the  sacrosanct  victim  ceased  to  be  eaten,  it  was 
necessary  to  find  some  other  way  of  disposing  of  its  flesh. 
It  will  be  remembered  that,  in  the  sacrificial  meals  of 
Nilus's  Saracens,  it  was  a  point  of  religion  that  the  whole 
carcase  should  be  consumed  before  the  sun  rose ;  the  victim 
was  so  holy  that  no  part  of  it  could  be  treated  as  mere 
waste.  The  problem  of  disposing  of  the  sacred  carcase 
was  in  fact  analogous  to  that  which  occurs  whenever  a 
kinsman  dies.  Here,  too,  the  point  is  to  find  a  way  of 
dealing  with  the  body  consistent  with  the  respect  due  to 
the  dead — a  respect  which  does  not  rest  on  sentimental 
grounds,  but  on  the  belief  that  the  corpse  is  tahoo,  a  source 
of  very  dangerous  supernatural  influences  of  an  infectious 
kind.  In  later  times  this  infectiousness  is  expressed  as 
uncleanness,  but  in  the  primitive  taboo,  as  we  know, 
sanctity  and  uncleanness  meet  and  are  indistinguishable. 
Now,  as  regards  the  kindred  dead  generally,  we  find  a  great 
range  of  funeral  customs,  all  directed  to  make  sure  that 
the  corpse  is  properly  disposed  of,  and  can  no  longer  be  a 
source  of  danger  to  the  living,  but  rather  of  blessing.^  In 
certain  cases  it  is  the  duty  of  the  survivors  to  eat  up  their 
dead,  just  as  in  Nilus's  sacrifice.  This  was  the  use  of  the 
Issedones,  according  to  Herodotus,  iv.  26.      At  other  times 

the  ground,  otherwise  there  will  be  blood-revenge  for  it.  I  cannot  but 
suspect  that  the  legend  is  based  on  an  old  form  of  sacrifice  applied  to  captive 
chiefs  (cf.  the  case  of  Agag)  ;  it  is  described  as  the  habitual  way  of  killing 
kings.  The  rule  that  not  a  drop  of  the  blood  must  fall  on  the  ground  appears 
also  in  Caffre  sacrifice  ;  Maclean,  Caffre  Laivs,  p.  81.  According  to  later 
authorities,  cited  in  the  Taj  al-' Arils  (i.  3.  181  of  the  old  edition),  it  was 
enough  for  this  cure  to  draw  a  drop  of  blood  from  the  finger  of  a  noble,  and 
drink  it  mixed  with  water. 

This  subject  has  been  fully  handled  by  Mr.  J.  G.  Frazer  in  Jown. 
Anthrop.  Inst.  xv.  64  sqq.,  to  which  I  refer  for  details.  I  think  Mr.  Frazer 
goes  too  far  in  supposing  that  mere  fear  of  ghosts  rules  in  all  these  observ- 
ances. Not  seldom  we  find  also  a  desire  for  continued  fellowship  with  the 
dead,  under  such  conditions  as  make  the  fellowship  free  from  danger. 
In  the  language  of  physics  sanctity  is  a  i^olar  force,  it  both  attracts  and 
repels. 


LECT.  X.  SACRIFICIAL    FLESH.  351 


the  dead  are  thrown  outside  the  kraal,  to  be  eaten  by  wild 
beasts  (Masai  land),  or  are  deposited  in  a  desert  place 
which  men  must  not  approach  ;  but  more  commonly  the 
body  is  buried  or  burned.  All  these  practices  reappear  in 
the  case  of  such  sacrifices  as  may  not  be  eaten.  Mere 
exposure  on  the  soil  of  the  sanctuary  was  perhaps  the  use 
in  certain  Arabian  cults,^  but  this,  it  is  plain,  could  not 
suflice  unless  the  sacred  enclosure  was  an  adyton  forbidden 
to  the  foot  of  man.  Hence  at  Duma  the  annual  human 
victim  is  buried  at  the  foot  of  the  altar  idol,^  and  elsewhere, 
perhaps,  the  corpse  is  hung  up  between  earth  and  heaven 
before  the  deity.^  Or  else  the  sacrosanct  flesh  is  carried 
away  into  a  desert  place  in  the  mountains,  as  was  done  in 
the  Greek  piacula  of  which  Hippocrates  speaks,  or  is 
simply  flung  down  (a  precipice)  from  the  vestibule  of  the 
temple,  as  was  the  use  of  Hierapolis.*  Among  the  Hebrews, 
on  the  same  principle,  the  heifer  offered  in  atonement 
for  an  untraced  murder  was  sacrificed  by  striking  off 
its  head  in  a  barren  ravine.^ 

^  Suprct,  p.  208  sqq. 

-  Porph.,  De  Abst.  ii.  56.  In  old  Arabia  little  girls  were  often  buried 
alive  by  their  fathers,  apparently  as  sncrificcs  to  the  goddesses,  see  Kinahip, 
p.  281.  A  similar  form  of  human  sacrifice  probably  lies  at  the  root  of  the 
legend  about  the  tombs  of  the  lovers  whom  Seniiraniis  buried  alive  (Syncellus, 
i.  119,  from  John  of  Antioch),  for  though  these  lovers  are  gods,  all  myths  of 
the  death  of  gods  seem  to  be  derived  from  sacrifices  of  theanthropic  victims. 

*  Deut.  xxi.  21  ;  of.  1  Sam.  xxxi.  10.  The  execution  of  criminals  con- 
stantly assumes  sacrificial  forms,  for  the  tribesman's  life  is  sacred  even  if  he 
be  a  criiuinal,  and  lie  must  not  be  killed  in  a  common  way.  This  princijjlo 
is  finally  extended  to  all  religious  executions,  in  which,  as  the  Hebrews  and 
Moabites  say,  the  victim  is  devoted,  as  a  hertm,  to  the  god  (Stele  of  Mesha, 
1.  17).  In  one  peculiar  sacrifice  at  Hicrapolis  {Dca  Syr.  xlix.)  the  victims 
were  suspended  alive  from  trees,  and  the  trees  were  then  set  on  fire.  The 
fire  is  perhaps  a  later  addition,  and  the  original  rite  may  have  consisted  in 
suspension  alone.  The  story  of  a  human  victim  hung  up  in  tlie  temple 
at  Carrhai  by  the  Emperor  Julian  (Theod.,  //.  E.  iii.  "21),  and  tlie  similar 
stories  in  the  Syriac  Julian-romances  (ed.  Hoffni.,  p.  247,  etc.),  are  too 
apocryphal  to  be  used,  thougli  they  probably  reflect  some  obsolete  popular 
superstition. 

♦  Dea  Syria,  Iviii.  '  Deut,  xxi.  4. 


352  HUMAN 


LECT.   X. 


Most  commonly,  however,  human  sacrifices,  and  in 
general  all  such  sacrifices  as  were  not  eaten,  were  burned ; 
and  this  usage  is  found  not  only  among  the  Hebrews  and 
Phoenicians,  with  whom  fire  -  sacrifices  were  common,  but 
among  the  Arabs,  who  seem  to  have  admitted  the  fire- 
offering  in  no  other  case.  In  the  more  advanced  rituals 
the  use  of  fire  corresponds  with  the  conception  of  the  gods 
as  subtle  beings,  moving  in  the  air,  whose  proper  nourish- 
ment is  the  fragrant  smoke  of  the  burning  flesh ;  so  that 
the  burnt-offering,  like  the  fat  of  the  vitals  in  ordinary 
victims,  is  the  food  of  the  gods,  and  falls  under  the  head  of 
sacrificial  gifts.  But  in  the  Levitical  ritual  this  explana- 
tion is  sedulously  excluded  in  the  case  of  the  sin-offering ; 
the  fat  is  burned  on  the  altar,  but  the  rest  of  the  flesh,  so 
far  as  it  is  not  eaten  by  the  priests,  is  burned  outside  the 
camp,  i.e.  outside  the  walls  of  Jerusalem,  so  that  in  fact 
the  burning  is  merely  an  additional  precaution  added  to 
the  older  rule  that  the  sacred  flesh  must  not  be  left 
exposed  to  human  contact.  But  the  Levitical  sin-offering 
is  only  a  special  development  of  the  old  piacular  holocaust, 
and  thus  the  question  at  once  suggests  itself  whether  in  its 
first  origin  the  holocaust  was  a  subtle  way  of  conveying  a 
gift  of  food  to  the  god ;  or  whether  rather  the  victim  was 
burned,  because  it  was  too  sacred  to  be  eaten  and  yet  must 
not  be  left  undisposed  of.  In  the  case  of  the  Arabian 
holocaust,  which  is  confined  to  human  victims,  this  is 
certainly  the  easiest  explanation ;  and  even  among  the 
Hebrews  and  their  neighbours  it  would  seem  that  human 
sacrifices  were  not  ordinarily  burned  on  the  altar  or  even 
within  the  precincts  of  the  sanctuary,  but  rather  outside  the 
city.  It  is  plain  from  various  passages  of  the  prophets 
that  the  sacrifices  of  children  among  the  Jews  before  the 
captivity,  which  are  commonly  known  as  sacrifices  to 
Moloch,  were  regarded  by  the  worshippers  as  oblations  to 


LECT.  X.  HOLOCAUSTS.  353 


Jehovah,  under  the  title  of  king/  yet  they  were  not  pre- 
sented at  the  temple,  but  consumed  outside  the  town  at 
the  Topliet  in  the  ravine  below  the  temple.'^     From  Isa. 
XXX.  33   it  appears  that  Tophet  means  a  pyre,  such  as  is 
I)rcpared  for  a  king.     But  the  Hebrews  themselves  did  not 
burn   their  dead,  unless   in    very   exceptional    cases,"^   and 
burial  was  equally  the  rule  among  their  Phcjonician  neigh- 
bours, as  is   plain    from   researches    in    their    cemeteries,* 
and  apparently  among  all  the  Semites.     Thus,  when  the 
prophet  describes  the  deep  and  wide  pyre  "  prepared  for 
the  king,"  he  does  not  draw  his  figure  from  ordinary  life, 
nor   is   it   conceivable  that  he  is  thinking  of  the  human 
sacrifices  in  the  valley  of  Hinnom,  a  reference  which  would 
bring  an  utterly  discordant  strain  into  the  imagery.     What 
he  does  refer  to  is  a  rite  well  known  to  Semitic  reliction, 
which  was  practised  at  Tarsus  down  to  the  time  of  Dio 
Chrysostom,   and   the    memory   of   which    survives  in  the 
Greek    legend    of     Heracles  -  Melcarth,    in    the    story    of 
Sardanapalus,  and  in  the  myth  of  Queen  Dido.      At  Tarsus 
there  was  an  annual  feast  at  which  a  very  fair  pyre  was 
erected,  and   the  local  Heracles  or   Baal  burned  on  it  in 
efFigy.*     This  annual  commemoration  of  the  death  of  the 

'  Jer.  vii.  31,  xix.  .5,  xxxii.  3r>;  Ezck.  xxiii.  39;  Micali  vi.  7.  The  form 
!Moloch  (LXX. ),  or  ratlier  Molech  (Heb. ),  is  nothing  but  Mfi.lech,  "  king, "  read 
with  the  vowels  of  hoxheth,  "shameful  thing;"  see  HofTmann  in  Stade's 
Ze'd.-^chr.  iii.  (1883)  p.  124.     In  .Tor.  xix.  5  delete  ^ya^  T\'bv  with  LXX. 

-The  valley  of  Hinuom  is  the  Tyropteon ;  see  Enc.  Brit.,  arts.  "Jeru- 
salem "  and  "Temple." 

■'  Saul's  body  was  burned  (I  Sam.  xxxi.  12),  possibly  to  save  it  from  the 
risk  of  exhumation  by.  the  Philistines,  but  perhaps  rather  with  a  religious 
intention,  and  almost  as  an  act  of  worship,  since  his  bones  were  buried  under 
the  sacred  tamarisk  at  Jabesh.  In  Amos  vi.  10  the  victims  of  a  plague  are 
burned,  which  is  to  be  understood  by  comparing  Lev.  xx.  14,  xxi.  9,  Amos 
ii.  1,  and  remembering  that  plague  was  a  special  mark  of  divine  wrath 
(2  Sam.  xxiv.),  so  that  its  victims  might  well  be  regarded  as  intensely  tahoo. 

*  This  is  true  also  of  Carthage  ;  Tissot,  La  Prov.  d'Afriqtie,  i.  612  ; 
Justin,  xix.  1. 

*  See  0.  Miiller,  "  Sandon  und  Sardanapal,"  in  Rhein.  Mm.,  Ser.  i.,  Bd.  iii, 

Z 


354  HUMAN  LECT.  X. 


o-od  in  fire  must  have  its  origin  in  an  older  rite,  in  which 
the  victim  was  not  a  mere  effigy  but  a  theanthropic  sacri- 
fice, i.e.  an  actual  man  or  sacred  animal,  whose  life,  according 
to  the  antique  conception  now  familiar  to  us,  was  an 
embodiment  of  the  divine-human  life. 

The  significance  of  the  death  of  the  god  in  Semitic 
religion  is  a  subject  on  which  I  must  not  enter  in  this 
connection ;  we  are  here  concerned  with  it  only  in  so  far 
as  the  details,  scenic  or  mythical,  of  the  death  of  the  god 
throw  light  on  the  ritual  of  human  sacrifice.  And  for 
this  purpose  it  is  well  to  cite  also  the  legend  of  the  death 
of  Dido  as  it  is  related  by  Timc-eus,i  where  the  pyre  is 
erected  outside  the  walls  of  the  palace,  i.e.  of  the  temple 
of  the  goddess,  and  she  leaps  into  it  from  the  height  of 
the  edifice.  According  to  Justin  the  pyre  stood  "  at  the 
end  of  the  town ; "  in  fact  the  sanctuary  of  Coelestis,  which 
seems  to  represent  the  temple  of  Dido,  stood  a  little  way 
outside  the  citadel  or  original  city  of  Carthage,  on  lower 
ground,  and,  at  the  beginning  of  the  fourth  century  of  our 
era,  w\as  surrounded  by  a  thorny  jungle,  which  the  popular 
imagination  pictured  as  inhabited  by  asps  and  dragons,  the 
guardians  of  the  sanctuary.^  It  can  hardly  be  doubted  that 
the  spot  at  which  legend  placed  the  self-sacrifice  of  Dido 
to  her  husband  Sicharbas  was  that  at  which  the  later 
Carthaginian  human  sacrifices  were  performed.^ 

We  have  therefore  a  series  of  examples  all  pointing 
to  human  sacrifice  beneath  and  outside  the  city.  At 
Hierapohs  the  victims  are  cast  down  from  the  temple,  but 

^  Fr.  Hist.  Or.  i.  197  ;  cf.  Justin,  xviii.  6.  On  Dido  as  identical  with 
Tanith  (Tent),  h  lai/^cov  t?,;  Ka.px^^'"">s,  see  the  ingenious  conjectures  of  G. 
HolFmann,  Phren.  Inxchr.  p.  32  .sq. 

^  Tissot,  1.  653.  Silius  Ital,  i.  81  sqq.,  also  describes  the  temple  of  Dido 
as  enclosed  in  a  thick  grove,  and  surrounded  hy  awful  mystery. 

^  The  name  Sichar-bas,  7j;2 — iDTi  "commemoration  of  Baal,"  is  not  a 
divine  title,  but  is  to  be  understood  from  Ex,  xx.  2i. 


LECT.  X.  HOLOCAUSTS.  355 

we  do  not  read  that  they  are  hurned ;  at  Jerusalem  they 
are  burned  in  the  ravine  below  the  temple,  but  not  cast 
down.  At  Carthage  the  two  rites  meet,  the  sacrifice  is 
outside  the  city  and  outside  the  walls  of  the  temple ;  Ijut 
the  divine  victim  leaps  into  the  pyre,  and  later  victims,  as 
Diodorus  tells  us,^  were  allowed  to  roll  into  a  fiery  pit 
from  a  sort  of  scaffold  in  the  shape  of  an  image  of  the  god 
with  outstretched  arms.  In  this  last  shape  of  the  rite  the 
object  plainly  is  to  free  the  worshippers  from  the  guilt  of 
l)loodshed ;  the  child  was  delivered  alive  to  the  god,  and 
he  committed  it  to  the  flames.  For  the  same  reason,  at 
the  so-called  sacrifice  of  the  pyre  at  Hierapolis,  the  holo- 
causts were  burnt  alive,"  and  so  was  the  Harranian  sacri- 
fice of  a  bull  to  the  planet  Saturn  described  by  Dimashki;^ 
This  last  sacrifice  is  the  lineal  descendant  of  the  older 
human  sacrifices  of  which  we  have  been  speaking;  for 
the  Carthaginian  Baal  or  Moloch  was  identified  with  Saturn, 
and  at  Hierapolis  the  sacrificed  children  are  called  oxen. 
But  in  the  more  ancient  Hebrew  rite  the  cliildren  offered 
to  Moloch  were  slaughtered  before  they  were  burned."*  And 
that  the  burning  is  secondary,  and  was  not  the  original 
substance  of  the  rite,  appears  also  from  the  use  of  Hiera- 
polis, where  the  sacrifice  is  simply  flung  from  the  temple. 
So  too,  although  Dido  in  Tima^us  flings  herself  into  the  fire, 
there  are  other  forms  of  the  legend  of  the  sacrifice  of  a  Semitic 
goddess,  in  which  she  simply  casts  herself  down  into  water,^ 

^  Diod.,  XX.  ]4.  -  Dea  Syria,  xlix. 

3  K(l.  Meliiuii,  1).  40  (Fr.  Tiansl.  p.  42). 

*  Ezck.  xvi.  20,  xxiii.  39  ;  Gen.  xxii.  10.  The  inscriptions  in  Gesenius, 
Moil.  Phwn.  p.  448  xq.,  which  have  sometimes  been  cited  in  this  connec- 
tion, are  now  known  to  have  nothing  to  do  with  human  sacrifice. 

°  The  Semiramis  legend  at  Hierapolis  and  Ascalon  ;  the  legend  of  the 
death  of  Astarte  at  Aphaca  (Meliton),  which  must  be  identified  with  the 
falling  of  the  star  into  the  water  at  the  annual  feast,  just  as  in  another 
legend  Aphrodite  after  the  death  of  Adonis  throws  herself  from  the 
Leucadian  promontory  (Ptol.,  Nov.  Hist.  vii.  p.  198,  West.). 


356  HUMAN  LECT.  X. 

AVhen  the  burning  came  to  be  the  essence  of  the  rite, 
the  spot  outside  the  city  where  it  was  performed  might 
naturally  become  itself  a  sanctuary,  though  it  is  plain 
from  the  descriptions  of  the  temple  of  Dido  that  the 
sanctuary  was  of  a  very  peculiar  and  awful  kind,  and 
separated  from  contact  with  man  in  a  way  not  usual  in 
the  shrines  of  ordinary  worship.  And  when  this  is  so 
the  deity  of  this  awful  sanctuary  naturally  comes  to  be 
regarded  as  a  separate  divinity,  rejoicing  in  a  cult  which 
the  other  gods  abhor.  But  originally,  we  see,  the  human 
sacrifice  is  offered  to  the  ordinary  god  of  the  community, 
only  it  is  not  consumed  on  the  altar  in  the  sanctuary,  but 
cast  down  into  a  ravine  outside,  or  burned  outside.  This 
rule  appears  to  be  universal,  and  I  may  note  one  or  two 
other  instances  that  confirm  it.  Mesha  burns  his  son  as  a 
holocaust  to  Chemosh,  not  at  the  temple  of  Chemosh,  but 
on  the  wall  of  his  beleaguered  city ;  ^  being  under  blockade, 
he  could  not  go  outside  the  wall.  Again,  at  Amathus  the 
human  sacrifices  offered  to  Jupiter  Hospes  were  sacrificed 
"  before  the  gates," "  and  here  the  Jupiter  Hospes  of  the 
lioman  narrator  can  be  none  other  than  the  Amathusian 
Heracles  or  Malika,  whose  name,  preserved  by  Hesychius, 
identifies  him  with  the  Tyrian  Melcarth.  Or,  again,  Malalas  ^ 
tells  us  that  the  22nd  of  May  was  kept  as  the  anniversary 
of  a  virgin  sacrificed  at  the  foundation  of  Antioch,  at 
sunrise,  "half-way  between  the  city  and  the  river,"  and 
afterwards  worshipped  like  Dido  as  the  Fortune  of  the  town. 

All  this  is  so  closely  parallel  to  the  burning  of  the  flesh 
of  the  Hebrew  sin-offerings  outside  the  camp  that  it  seems 
hardly  doubtful  that  originally,  as  in  the  Hebrew  sin- 
offering,  the  true  sacrifice,  i.e.  the  shedding  of  the  blood,  took 
place  at  the  temple,  and  the  burning  was  a  distinct  act. 

1  2  Kings  iii.  27.  *  Ovid.,  Metaph.  x.  224  ;  cf.  Movers,  i.  408  sq. 

3  P.  200  of  the  Bonn  ed. 


LECT.  X.  HOLOCAUSTS.  357 

An  intermediate  stacfe  is  exhibited  in  tlie  sacrifice  of  tlie 
red  heifer,  where  the  whole  ceremony  takes  place  outside 
the  camp,  but  the  blood  is  sprinkled  in  tlie  direction  of  the 
sanctuary  (Numb.  xix.  4).  And  in  support  of  this  view 
let  me  press  one  more  point  that  has  come  out  in  our 
evidence.  The  human  holocaust  is  not  burned  on  an 
altar,  but  on  a  pyre  or  fire  pit  constructed  for  the  occasion. 
This  appears  botli  in  the  myths  of  Dido  and  Heracles  and 
in  actual  usage.  At  Tarsus  a  very  fair  pyre  is  erected 
yearly  for  the  burning  of  Heracles ;  in  the  Carthaginian 
sacrifice  of  boys  the  victims  fall  into  a  pit  of  flame,  and 
in  the  Harranian  ox-sacrifice  the  victim  is  fastened  to  a 
grating  placed  over  a  vault  filled  with  burning  fuel ; 
finally,  Isaiah's  Tophet  is  a  broad  and  deep  excavation 
filled  with  wood.  All  these  arrangements  are  totally 
unlike  the  old  Semitic  altar  or  sacred  stone,  and  are  mere 
developments  of  the  primitive  fireplace,  made  by  scooping 
a  hollow  in  the  ground.^  It  appears  then  that  in  the 
ritual    of     liuman    sacrifice,    and    therefore    by    necessary 

^  It  seems  to  me  that  nSD  is  properly  an  Aramaic  name  for  a  fireiilace,  or 
for  tlic  framework  set  on  tbe  fire  to  sufjport  the  victim,  which  appears  in  tlie 
Harranian  sacrifice  and,  in  a  modified  form,  at  Carthage.  For  we  are  not  to 
think  of  the  brazen  idol  as  a  shapely  statue,  but  as  a  development  of  the  dogs 
of  a  primitive  fireplace.  I  figure  it  to  myself  as  a  pillar  or  cone  with  a  rude 
head  and  arms,  something  like  the  divine  symbol  so  often  figured  on 
Carthaginian  Tanith  cippi.     Now  the  name  for  the  stones  on  wdiich  a  pot 

is  set,  and  then  for  any  stand  or  tripod  set  ujjon  a  fire,  is  in  Arabic  <^^)^'\ 
Othfhja,  in  Syriac  (  «  ^  ^,  Tfdyd,  of  which  we  might,  according  to  known 
analogies,  have  a  variant  tfuth.  The  corresponding  Hebrew  word  is 
nbC'S  (for  sh/itth),  which  means  an  ashpit  or  dunghill,  but  primarily  must 

have  denoted  the  fireplace,  since  the  denominative  verb  DSC  is  "to  set  on 
a  pot."  In  nomad  life  the  firejdace  of  one  day  is  the  ash-licap  of  the  next. 
Now  at  the  time  when  the  word  riSD  fi'st  ajipears  in  Hebrew,  the  chief 
foreign  inlluence  in  Juda^an  religion  was  that  of  Damascus  (2  Kings  xvi.), 
and  there  is  therefore  no  improbability  in  the  hypothesis  that  nSH  is  an 
Aramaic  word.  The  pronunciation  tofeth  is  quite  jirecarions,  for  LXX.  has 
Ta^iP,  and  the  Massorets  seem  to  have  given  the  loathsome  thing  the  points 
of  hoshtth. 


358  ALTAES    OF 


I.ECT.   X. 


inference  in  the  ritual  of  the  holocaust  generally,  the 
burning  was  originally  no  integral  part  of  the  ceremony, 
and  did  not  take  place  on  the  altar  or  even  within  the 
sanctuary,  but  in  a  place  apart,  away  from  the  habitations 
of  man.  For  human  sacrifices  and  for  solemn  piacula 
this  rule  continued  to  be  observed  even  to  a  late  date,  but 
for  ordinary  animal  holocausts  the  custom  of  burning  the 
tlesh  in  the  court  of  the  sanctuary  must  have  established 
itself  pretty  early.  Thus,  as  regards  the  Hebrews,  both  the 
oldest  narrators  of  the  Pentateuch  (the  Jahvist  and  the 
Elohistj  presuppose  the  custom  of  burning  holocausts  and 
other  sacrifices  on  the  altar,-^  so  that  the  fusion  is  already 
complete  between  the  sacred  stone  to  receive  the  blood,  and 
the  hearth  on  which  the  flesh  was  burned.  But  this  does 
not  carry  us  back  beyond  the  eighth  or  ninth  century  B.C., 
and  the  oldest  history  still  preserves  traces  of  a  different 
custom.  The  burnt-sacrifices  of  Gideon  and  Manoah  are 
not  offered  on  an  altar  but  on  the  bare  rock,^  and  even 
at  the  opening  of  Solomon's  temple  the  fire-offerings  were 
burned  not  on  the  altar,  but  in  the  middle  of  the  court  in 
front  of  the  naos,  as  was  done  many  centuries  later  at 
Hierapolis  on  the  day  of  the  Pyre-sacrifice,  It  is  true  that 
in  1  Kings  viii.  64  this  is  said  to  have  been  done  only 
because  "  the  brazen  altar  that  was  before  the  Lord  "  was 
not  large  enough  for  so  great  an  occasion ;  but  it  is  very 
doubtful  whether  there  was  in  the  first  temple  any  other 
brazen  altar  than  the  two  brazen  pillars,  Jachin  and  Boaz, 
which  corresponded  to  the  antique  altar  cippus,  and  so 
might  indeed  be  sprinkled  with  sacrificial  blood,  but  could 
not  be  used  as  altars  of  burnt-offering.     The  first  definite 

^  Gen.  viii.  20,  xxii.  9.  Ex.  xx.  24  makes  the  holocaust  be  slaughtered 
on  the  altar,  hut  does  not  expressly  say  that  it  was  burned  on  it. 

^  Judg.  vi.  20,  xiii.  19 ;  Judg.  vi.  20,  the  more  modern  story  of  Gideon's 
offering,  gives  the  modern  ritual. 


LECT.  X.  BURNT-OFFERING.  350 

appearance  of  a  formal  built-up  altar  of  burnt-offering  at 
the  temple  of  Jerusalem  is  in  the  reign  of  Ahaz,  who  had 
one  constructed  on  the  model  of  the  altar  of  Damascus. 
This  altar,  and  not  the  brazen  altar,  was  again  the  model 
for  the  altar  of  the  second  temple,  which  was  of  stone  not 
of  brass,  and  it  is  plain  from  the  narrative  of  2  Kings  xvi., 
especially  in  the  form  of  the  text  which  has  been  preserved 
by  the  Septuagint,  that  Ahaz's  innovation  was  not  merely 
the  introduction  of  a  new  architectural  pattern,  but  involved 
a  modification  of  the  whole  ritual.^ 

We  may  now  pass  on  to  the  case  of  ordinary  fire- 
offerings  in  which  only  the  fat  of  the  vitals  is  consumed 
on  the  altar.  It  is  easy  to  see  that  when  men  began  to 
shrink  from  the  eating  of  sacrificial  flesh,  they  would  not 
necessarily  at  once  take  refuge  in  entire  abstinence.  The 
alternative  was  to  abstain  from  partaking  of  those  parts 
in  which  the  sacred  life  especially  centred.  Accordingly 
we  find  that  in  ordinary  Hebrew  sacrifices  tlie  whole  blood 
is  poured  out  at  the  altar  as  a  thing  too  sacred  to  be 
eaten.'  Again,  the  head  is  by  many  nations  regarded  as 
a  special  seat  of  the  soul,  and  so,  in  Egyptian  sacrifice,  the 
head  was  not  eaten  but  thrown  into  the  Nile,'^  while 
among  the  Iranians  tlie  head  of  the  victim  was  dedicated 
to  Haoma,  that  the  immortal  part  of  the  animal  might 
return  to  him.  But  a  not  less  important  seat  of  life, 
according  to  Semitic  ideas,  lay  in  the  viscera,  especially  in 

^  See  Additional  Note  L,  The  Altar  at  Jerusalem.  I  may  add  that,  iu 
1  Kings  xviii.,  Elijah's  altar  doi's  not  seem  to  be  a  raised  strticture,  but 
simply  a  circle  marked  out  by  twelve  standing  stones  and  a  trench. 

-  Among  the  Hottentots  blood  is  allowed  to  men  but  not  to  women  ; 
the  female  sex  being  among  savages  excludcnl  from  many  holy  jirivileges. 
Similarly  the  flesh  of  the  Hebrew  sin-olfering  must  be  eaten  only  by  males 
(Lev.  vi.  22  (29)),  and  among  the  CafTres  the  head,  breast  and  heart  are 
man's  part  (Liehtcnstein,  p.  451). 

^  Herod.,  ii.  39.  The  objection  to  eating  the  head  is  very  widely  spread  ; 
we  find  it  in  Bavaria  as  late  as  the  fifteenth  century  (Usener,  Religionsgesch. 
Untemuchungen,  ii.  84). 


360  SACREDNESS   OF  lfxt.  x. 

the  kidneys  and  the  liver,  which  in  the  Semitic  dialects 
are  continually  named  as  the  seats  of  emotion,  or  more 
broadly  in  the  fat  of  the  omentum  and  the  organs  that 
lie  in  and  near  it.^  Now  it  is  precisely  this  part  of  the 
victim,  the  fat  of  the  omentum  with  the  kidneys  and  tlie 
lobe  of  the  liver,  which  the  Hebrews  were  forbidden  to 
eat,  and,  in  the  case  of  sacrifice,  burned  on  the  altar. 

The  ideas  connected  with  the  kidney  fat  and  its  appur- 
tenances may  be  illustrated  by  the  usages  of  primitive 
peoples  in  modern  times.  When  the  Australians  kill  an 
enemy  in  blood  revenge,  "  they  always  abstract  the  kidney 
fat,  and  also  take  off  a  piece  of  the  skin  of  the  thigh  "  [or 
a  piece  of  the  flank].^  "  These  are  carried  home  as  trophies. 
.  .  .  The  caul  fat  is  carefully  kept  by  the  assassin,  and 
used  to  lubricate  himself ; "  he  thinks,  we  are  told,  that 
thus  the  strength  of  the  victim  enters  into  him.^     When 

^  The  Arabic  Khilh  (Heb.  3?n,  Syr.  hdhd)  primarily  denotes  the 
omentum  or  midriff,  but  includes  the  fat  or  suet  connected  thercnvith  ;  see 
Lev.  iii.  3.  An  Arab  says  of  a  woman  who  has  inspired  him  with  passion, 
"  she  has  overturned  my  heart  and  torn  my  midriff"  (Lane,  p.  782).  So 
in  Ps.  xvi.  10  the  sense  is  not  "they  have  closed  their  fat  (unfeeling) 
heart,"  but  "  they  have  shut  up  their  midriff,  and  so  are  insensible  to  pity." 
From  this  complex  of  fat  parts  the  fat  of  the  kidneys  is  particularly  selected 
by  the  Arabs,  and  by  most  savages,  as  the  special  seat  of  life.  One  says 
"  I  found  him  with  his  kidney  fat,"  meaning  I  found  him  brisk  and  all 
alive  (Lane,  p.  1513).  Li  Egypt,  according  to  Burckhardt  {Ar.  Prov.  No. 
301),  "when  a  sheep  is  killed  by  a  private  person,  some  of  the  bystanders 
often  take  away  the  kidneys,  or  at  least  the  fat  that  incloses  them,  as  due 
to  the  public  from  him  who  slaughters  the  sheep."  This,  I  take  it,  is  a  relic 
of  old  sacrificial  usage  ;  what  used  to  be  given  to  the  god  is  now  given  in 
charity. 

2  The  thigh  is  a  seat  of  life  and  especially  of  procreative  power,  as  appears 
very  clearly  in  the  idiom  of  the  Semites  {Kinship,  p.  34).  From  this 
may  be  explained  the  sacredness  of  the  nerrm  ischiadkus  among  the 
Hebrews  (Gen.  xxxii.  33),  and  similar  supcr^ititions  among  other  nations.  Is 
this  also  the  reason  why  the  "fat  thigh-bones"  are  an  altar-portion  among 
the  Greeks  ?     The  nature  of  the  lameness  produced  by  injury  to  the  sinew  of 

the  thigh  socket  is  explained  by  the  Arabic  lexx.,  s.v.    d3.\s>.  ;  the  man 

can  only  walk  on  the  tips  of  his  toes.  This  seems  to  have  beeji  a  common 
affection,  for  poetical  metaphors  are  taken  from  it. 

3  Brough  Smyth,  ii.  289,  i.  102. 


LECT.    X. 


KIDNEY    FAT.  ^>()l 


the  Basutos  ofler  a  sacrifice  to  heal  tlie  sick,  as  soon  as 
the  victim  is  dead,  they  hasten  to  take  the  epiploon  or 
intestinal  covering,  which  is  considered  the  most  sacred 
part,  and  put  it  round  the  patient's  neck.  .  .  .  The  <:;all 
is  then  poured  on  the  head  of  the  patient.  After  a 
sacrifice  the  gall  bladder  is  invariably  fastened  to  the 
hair  of  the  individual  for  whom  the  victim  has  been  slain, 
and  becomes  a  sign  of  purification.^ 

The  importance  attached  by  various  nations  to  these 
vital  parts  of  the  body  is  very  ancient,  and  extends  to 
regions  where  sacrifice  by  fire  is  unknown.  The  point 
of  view  from  wliicli  we  are  to  regard  the  reluctance  to  eat 
of  them  is  that,  being  more  vital,  they  are  move  holy 
than  other  parts,  and  therefore  at  once  more  potent  and 
more  dangerous.  All  sacrificial  flesh  is  charged  witli  an 
awful  virtue,  and  all  sacra  are  dangerous  to  the  unclean 
or  to  those  who  are  not  duly  prepared;  but  these  are  so 
holy  and  so  awful  that  they  are  not  eaten  at  all,  1)ut  dealt 
with  in  special  ways,  and  in  particular  are  used  as  power- 
ful charms." 

We  see  from  the  ease  of  the  Basuto  sacrifice  that  it  is 
by  no  means  true  that  all  that  man  does  not  eat  must  be 
given  to  the  god,  and  the  same  thing  appears  in  other 
examples.  The  Hebrews  pour  out  the  blood  at  the  allui-. 
but  the  Greeks  use  it  for  lustration  and  the  old  Arabs  as 
a  cure  for  madness.  The  Persians  restore  the  head  and 
with  it  the  life  to  Haoma,  while  the  Tauri,  according  to 
Herodotus,  iv.  10:3,  in  their  liuman  sacrifices,  bury  the 
body  or  cast  it  down  from   the   cliff  on  which  the  temph- 

'  Casalis,  p.  250. 

-  This  may  bu  illustrated  by  the  case  of  the  blood  of  sacrificial  victims. 
Among  the  Greeks  bull's  blood  was  regarded  as  a  poison  ;  but  for  this 
belief  there  is  no  physiological  basis,  the  danger  lay  in  its  sacred  nature. 
But  conversely  it  was  used  under  divine  direction  as  a  medicine  ;  -Elian, 
X.  A.  xi.  35.  On  blood  as  a  medicine  see  also  Pliny,  //.  A"",  .\xviii.  43, 
x.wi.  8  ;  and  Adams's  Paulus  ^Eijiiitta,  iii.  25  «'/. 


o 


62  USE    OF    THE  LECT.  X. 


Stands,  but  fix  the  head  on  a  pole  above  their  houses  as  a 
sacred  guardian.  Among  the  Semites,  too,  the  magical 
use  of  a  dried  head  had  great  vogue.  This  sort  of  charm 
is  mentioned  by  Jacob  of  Edessa,^  and  hares'  heads  were 
worn  as  amulets  by  Arab  women."  So,  too,  when  we  find 
bones,  and  especially  dead  men's  bones,  used  as  charms,'^ 
we  must  think  primarily  of  the  bones  of  sacrifices. 
Nilus's  Saracens  at  least  broke  up  the  bones  and  ate  the 
marrow,  but  the  solid  osseous  tissue  must  from  the  first 
have  defied  most  teeth  unless  it  was  pounded,  and  so  it 
was  particularly  likely  to  be  kept  and  used  as  a  charm. 
Of  course  the  sacred  bones  may  have  lieen  often  buried, 
and  when  fire  was  introduced  they  were  likely  to  be  burned, 
as  is  the  rule  with  the  Caffres.*  As  the  sacrifices  of  the 
Caffres  are  not  fire-sacrifices,  it  is  clear  that  in  this  case 
the  bones  are  burned  to  dispose  of  the  holy  substance,  not 
to  provide  food  for  the  gods.  But  even  when  the  bones 
or  the  whole  carcase  of  a  sacrosanct  victim  are  burned,  the 
sacred  virtue  is  not  necessarily  destroyed.  The  ashes  of 
sacrifice  are  used,  like  the  blood,  for  lustrations  of  various 
kinds,  as  we  see  in  the  case  of  the  red  heifer  among  the 
Hebrews ;  and  in  agricultural  religions  such  ashes  are  very 
commonly  used  to  give  fertility  to  the  land.  That  is,  the 
sacred  elements,  after  they  cease  to  be  eaten,  are  still  used 
in  varied  forms  as  a  means  of  communicating  the  divine  life 
and  life-giving  or  cleansing  virtue  to  the  worshippers,  their 
liouses,  their  lands,  and  all  things  connected  with  them. 

^  Qu.  43  ;  see  more  examples  in  Kayser's  notes,  p.  142,  and  in  a  paper  by 
Jahn,  Btr.  d.  Siichs.  Ges.  d.  Wiss.  1854,  p.  48.  For  the  magical  human 
liead,  of  which  we  read  so  much  in  the  latest  forms  of  Semitic  heathenism, 
see  Chwolsohn,  ii.  150  sqq.,  and  the  Actes  of  the  Leyden  Congress,  ii.  365  .sr/. 

=*  Dm.  Hudh.  clxxx.  9  ;   ZDMG.  xxxix.  329. 

*  Examples  infra,  Add.  Note  C. ,  p.  429.  The  very  dung  of  cattle 
was  a  charm  in  Syria  (Jacob  of  Edessa,  Qu.  42),  to  which  n;any  parallels 
exist,  not  only  in  Africa,  but  among  the  Aryans  of  India. 

*  Maclean,  p.  81. 


LECT.  X.  KIDNEY    FAT.  ?>(jo 

Tu  the  later  tire-rituals  the  fat  of  tlie  victim,  with  its 
blood,  is  quite  specially  the  altar  food  of  the  gods.  Jkit 
between  the  practice  which  this  view  represents  and  the 
primitive  practice,  in  which  the  whole  body  was  eaten,  we 
must,  I  think,  in  accordance  with  what  has  just  been  said, 
insert  an  intermediate  stage,  which  can  still  be  seen  and 
studied  in  the  usage  of  primitive  peoples.  Among  the 
Daniaras  the  fat  of  particular  animals  is  supposed  to 
possess  certain  virtues,  and  is  carefully  collected  and  kept 
in  vessels  of  a  particular  kind.  A  small  portion  dissolved 
in  water  is  given  to  persons  who  return  home  safely  after 
a  lengthened  absence  ;  .  .  .  the  chief  makes  use  of  it  as 
an  unguent  for  his  body.^  So  too  "  dried  flesh  and  fat " 
are  used  as  amulets  by  the  Namaquas.^  Amoug  the 
Bechuanas  lubrication  with  grease  is  part  of  the  ceremony 
of  admission  of  girls  into  womanhood,  and  among  the 
Hottentots  young  men  on  their  initiation  into  manhood  are 
daubed  with  fat  and  soot."  Grease  is  the  usual  unguent 
all  over  Africa,  and  from  these  examples  we  see  that  its 
use  is  not  merely  hygienic,  but  has  a  sacred  meaning. 
Indeed,  the  use  of  various  kinds  of  fat,  especially  human 
fat,  as  a  charm,  is  common  all  over  the  world,  and  we  learn 
from  the  Australian  superstition  quoted  above  that  the 
reason  of  this  is  that  the  fat,  as  a  special  seat  of  life,  is  a 
vehicle  of  the  living  virtue  of  the  being  from  which  it  is 
taken.  Now  we  have  seen  in  speaking  of  the  use  of 
unguents  in  Semitic  religion,'*  that  this  particular  medium 
has  in  some  way  an  equivalent  value  to  blood,  for  which  it 
may  be  substituted  in  the  covenant  ceremony,  and  also  in 
the  ceremony  of  bedaubing  the  sacred  stone  as  an  act  of 

^  Anderson,  Lake  Ngami,  p,  223. 

-  Ibid.   p.   330.     The  dried  flesh  reminds  us  of  the  Arabian   t'ustoni  of 
dryini,'  strips  of  sacrificial  flesh  on  the  days  of  Mina  ( Wcllh.,  p.  79). 
3  Ibid.  p.  465  ;  Kolben,  i.  121.  ■•  Supra,  p.  215. 


3G4  BURNING 


LKCT.    X. 


homage.  If,  now,  we  remember  that  the  oldest  unguents 
are  animal  fats,  and  that  vegetable  oil  was  unknown  to 
the  Semitic  nomads,^  we  are  plainly  led  to  the  conclusion 
that  unction  is  primarily  an  application  of  tlie  sacrificial 
fat,  with  its  living  virtues,  to  the  persons  of  the  wor- 
shippers. On  this  view  the  anointing  of  kings,  and 
the  use  of  unguents  on  visiting  the  sanctuary,  are  at 
once  intelligible." 

The  agricultural  Semites  anointed  themselves  with  olive 
oil,  and  burned  the  sacrificial  fat  on  the  altar.  This  could 
be  done  without  any  fundamental  modification  of  the  old 
type  of  sacred  stone  or  altar  pillar,  simply  by  making  a 
hollow  on  the  top  to  receive  the  grease ;  and  there  is  some 
reason  to  think  that  fire-altars  of  this  simple  kind,  which 
in  certain  Phoenician  types  are  developed  into  altar  candle- 
sticks, are  older  than  the  broad  platform-altar  proper  for 
receiving  a  burnt-offering.^  But  there  are  evidences  even 
in  the  Old  Testament  that  it  was  only  gradually  that  the 
burning  of  the  fat  came  to  be  an  integral  part  of  the  altar 
ritual.  In  1  Sam.  ii.  15  we  find  a  controversy  between 
the  priests  and  the  people  on  this  very  topic.  The 
worshippers  maintain  that  the  priest  has  no  claim  to  his 
fee  of  flesh  till  the  fat  is  burned;  but  the  priests  assert  their 
right  to  have  a  share  of  raw  flesh  at  once.  It  is  assumed 
in  the  argument  that  if  the  priests  held  back  their  claim 
till  they  had  burned  the  fat,  the  flesh  would  be  already 
cooked — so  the  worshippers  at  least  did  not  wait  to  see 
the  fat  burned.  And  probably  the  priests  had  precedent 
on    their   side,    for    the    old   law    of    Ex.   xxiii.    18   only 

1  Frankel,  Fremdworter,  p.  147. 

-  The  use  of  unguents  l)y  witches  when  they  desire  to  transform  them- 
selves into  animal  shape, — as  we  find  it,  for  example,  in  Apuleius's  novel, — 
belongs  to  the  same  region  of  suj)erstition,  and  to  that  most  primitive  form 
of  the  superstition  which  turns  on  the  kinship  of  men  with  animals. 

^  See  below,  Additional  Note  L. 


i.KCT.  X.  OF   THE   FAT.  36; 


requires  that  the  fat  of  a  festal  sacrifice  shall  be  burned 
before  daybreak — the  sacrifice  itself  having  taken  place  in 
the  evening. 

I  fear  that  these  details  may  seem  tedious,  but  tlie 
cumulative  evidence  which  they  afford  tliat  the  burning  of 
tlie  flesh  or  fat  held  quite  a  secondary  place  in  ancient 
sacrifice,  and  was  originally  no  integral  part  of  the  oblation 
at  the  altar,  is  of  the  greatest  importance  for  the  history  of 
sacrificial  ideas.  They  show  how  impossible  it  is  to  regard 
animal  sacrifices  as  primarily  consisting  in  a  gift  of  food  to 
the  gods,  and  how  long  it  was  before  this  notion  superseded 
the  original  notion  of  comnmnion  between  men  and  their 
gods  in  the  life  of  the  sacrifice. 

I  do  not  suppose  that  it  is  possible  on  the  basis  of  the 
evidences  that  have  come  before  us  to  reconstruct  from 
step  to  step  the  whole  history  of  the  development  of  fire- 
sacrifices.  But  we  can  at  least  see  in  a  general  way  how  the 
chief  modifications  of  sacrificial  ritual  and  idea  came  in. 

Originally  neither  the  flesh  nor  the  life  of  the  victim 
could  be  regarded  as  a  gift  or  tribute — i.e.  as  something 
which  belonged  to  the  worshipper,  and  of  which  lie 
divested  himself  in  order  to  make  it  over  to  the  object  of 
his  worship.  It  is  probable  that  sacrifice  is  older  than 
the  idea  of  private  property,  and  it  is  certain  that  its 
beginnings  go  back  to  a  time  when  the  owner  of  a  sheep, 
an  ox,  or  a  camel  had  no  right  to  dispose  of  its  life 
according  to  his  own  good  pleasure.  Such  an  animal 
could  only  be  slain  in  order  that  its  life  might  be  distri- 
buted between  all  the  kin  and  the  kindred  god.  At  tliis 
stage  the  details  of  the  ritual  are  shaped  by  the  rule  that 
no  part  of  the  life  must  be  lost,  and  that  therefore  the 
whole  body,  which  is  the  vehicle  of  the  life,  must  be 
distributed  and  used  up  in  tlie  holy  ritual.  In  the  first 
instance,  therefore,  everything  must  be  eaten  up,  and  eaten 


366  ORIGIN    OF  LECT.  X. 

while  it  is  still  alive — fresh  and  raw.  Gradually  this 
rule  is  modified,  partly  because  it  is  difficult  to  insist, 
in  the  face  of  growing  civilisation,  on  the  rule  that 
even  bones,  skin  and  offal  must  be  devoured,  and  partly 
because  there  is  increasing  reluctance  to  partake  of  the 
holy  life.^  This  reluctance  again  is  connected  with  the 
growth  of  the  distinction  between  degrees  of  holiness. 
Not  every  man  is  holy  enough  to  partake  of  the  most 
sacred  sacraments  without  danger.  What  is  safe  for  a 
consecrated  chief  or  priest  is  not  safe  for  the  mass  of  the 
people.  Or  even  it  is  better  that  the  most  sacred  parts  of 
the  victim  should  not  be  eaten  at  all ;  the  blood  and  the 
fat  are  medicines  too  powerful  to  be  taken  internally,  but 
they  may  be  sprinkled  or  daubed  on  the  worshippers,  while 
the  sacrificial  meal  is  confined  to  the  parts  of  the  flesh  in 
which  the  sacred  life  is  less  intensely  present.  Or,  finally, 
it  is  most  seemly  and  most  safe  to  withdraw  the  holiest 
things  from  man's  use  altogether,  to  pour  out  the  whole 
blood  at  the  altar,  and  to  burn  the  fat.  All  this  applies 
to  ordinary  sacrifices,  in  which  the  gradual  concentration 
of  the  holiness  of  the  victim  in  its  fat  and  blood  tends  to 
make  the  rest  of  the  flesh  appear  less  and  less  holy,  till 
ultimately  it  becomes  almost  a  common  thing.  But,  on 
special  occasions,  where  the  old  ritual  is  naturally  observed 
with  antique  rigidity,  and  where,  therefore,  the  victim  is 
treated  at  the  altar  as  if  it  were  a  tribesman,  the  feeling 
of  sacred  horror  against  too  close  an  approach  to  things 
most  holy  extends  to  the  whole  flesh,  and  develops  itself, 
especially  in  connection  with  actual  human  sacrifice,  into 
the  rule  that  no  part  of  such  victims  may  be  eaten,  but 
that  the  whole  must  be  reverently  burned. 

If  we  may  generalize  from  the  case  of   Arabia,  where 
the  holocaust  was  confined  to  human  victims  and   the  fat 
^  Probably  these  two  reasons  are  fundamentally  one. 


LECT.  X.  FIRE-SACRIFICE.  367 

of  ordinary  sacrifices  was  not  burned,  it  would  appear  that 
it  was  human  sacrifice  that  first  gave  rise  to  the  use  of  fire 
as  a  safe  means  of  disposing  of  the  bodies  of  the  lioliest 
victims.  From  tliis  practice  tliat  of  burning  the  fat  in 
common  sacrifices  may  very  well  have  been  derived.  ]'>iit 
the  evidence  is  not  sufficient  to  justify  a  positive  con- 
clusion on  the  matter,  and  it  is  quite  possible  that  the  use 
of  fire  began  among  the  Northern  Semites  in  connection 
with  ordinary  sacrifices,  simply  as  a  means  of  dealing  with 
such  parts  of  tlie  victim  as  were  not  or  could  not  be  eaten, 
and  yet  were  too  holy  to  be  left  undisposed  of.  The 
Hebrew  ritual  of  ordinary  sacrifices  is  careful  to  prescribe 
that  what  is  not  eaten  on  the  first  or  second  day  shall  be 
burned.-^  This  is  evidently  a  mere  softening  of  the  old 
rule  that  the  flesh  of  the  victim  must  be  consumed  without 
delay,  while  it  is  still  alive  and  quivering,  into  the  rule 
that  it  must  not  be  allowed  to  putrefy  and  decompose ; 
and  this  again,  since  the  close  connection  between  putre- 
faction and  fermentation  is  patent  even  to  the  unscientific 
observer,  seems  also  to  be  the  principle  on  which  ferments 
are  excluded  from  the  altar.  The  use  of  fire  in  sacrifice, 
as  the  most  complete  and  thorough  means  of  avoiding 
putrefaction  in  whatever  part  of  the  victim  cannot  or  may 
not  be  eaten,  must  have  suggested  itself  so  naturally 
wherever  fire  was  known,  that  no  other  reason  is  necessary 
to  explain  its  wide  adoption.  The  burial  of  the  sacrificial 
flesh,  of  which  we  have  found  one  or  two  examples,  does 
not  appear  to  have  met  with  so  much  favour,  and  indeed 
was  not  so  satisfactory  from  the  point  of  view  indicated  by 
the  rules  of  Hebrew  ritual," 

The   use   of   fire   in   this   sense    does    not   involve   any 
fundamental    modification    in    the    ideas    connected    with 
sacrifice.      The  critical  point  in   the  development  is  when 
^  Le\r.  vii.  15  sqq.  -  See  Additional  Xote  M,  Hi'jh  Places. 


368  FIRE-SACRIFICE.  lect.  x. 

the  fat  of  ordinary  victims,  or  still  more,  the  whole  flesh 
of  the  holocaust,  is  burned  within  the  sanctuary  or  on  the 
altar,  and  is  regarded  as  being  thus  made  over  to  the  deity. 
Tliis  point  claims  to  be  examined  more  fully,  and  must  be 
reserved  for  consideration  at  our  next  meeting. 


LECTURE    XI. 

SACRIFICIAL    GIFTS    AND  PIACULAR    SACRIFICES THE    SPECIAL 

IDEAS    INVOLVED    IN    THE    LATTER. 

In    connection    with    the    later    Semitic    sacrifices    fire    is 
employed  for  two  purposes,  apparently  quite  independent 
of  one  another.     Its  ordinary  use  is  upon  the  altar,  where 
it  serves  to  sublimate,  and  so  to  convey  to  deities  of  an 
ethereal  nature,  gifts  of  solid  flesh,  which  are  regarded  as 
the  food  of  the  gods.     But  in  certain  Hebrew  piacula  the 
sacrificial  flesh   is   burned   without   the   camp,  and  is  not 
regarded  as  the  food  of  the  gods.      The  parts  of  the  victim 
which  in  the  highest  form  of  piacula  are  burned  outside 
the  camp  are  the  same  which  in  lower  forms  of  the  sin- 
offering  were  eaten  by  the  priests  as  representatives  of  the 
worshippers,  or  which  in   ordinary  sacrifices   would    have 
been  eaten  by  the  worshippers  themselves.     Here,  there- 
fore, the  fire  seems  to  play  the  same  part  that  is  assigned  to 
it  under  the  rule  that,  if  an  ordinary  sacrifice  is  not  eaten 
up  within  one  or  two  days,  the  remnant  must  be  burned. 
All  sacrificial  flesh  is  holy,  and  must  be  dealt  with  accord- 
inrr  to  fixed  ritual  rules,  one  of  which  is  that  it  must  not 
be  allowed  to  putrefy.       Ordinary  sacrificial  flesh  may  be 
either  eaten  or  burned,  but  sin-offerings  are  too  holy  to  be 
eaten  except  by  the  priests,  and  in  certain  cases  are  too 
holy  to   be   eaten   even   by  them,  and  therefore  must  be 
burned,  not  as  a  way  of  conveying  them  to  the  deity,  but 

simply  as  a  way  of  fitly  disposing  of  them. 

2  a 


370  ORIGIN   OF  LECT.  xr. 


It  is  commonly  supposed  that  the  first  use  of  fire  was 
upon  the  altar,  and  that  the  burning  outside  the  camp  is 
a  later  invention,  expressing  the  idea  that,  in  the  case  of  a 
sacrifice  for  sin,  the  deity  does  not  desire  a  material  gift, 
but  only  the  death  of  the  offender.  The  ritual  of  the 
Hebrew  sin-offering  lends  itself  to  such  an  interpretation 
readily  enough,  but  it  is  impossible  to  believe  that  its 
origin  is  to  be  explained  on  any  such  view.  If  the  sin- 
offering  is  merely  a  symbolical  representation  of  a  penal 
execution,  why  is  the  flesh  of  the  victim  holy  in  the  first 
degree  ?  and  why  are  the  blood  and  fat  offered  upon  the 
altar  ?  But  it  is  unnecessary  to  press  these  minor  objections 
to  the  common  view,  which  is  refuted  more  conclusively 
by  a  series  of  facts  that  have  come  before  us  in  the  course 
of  the  last  lecture.  There  is  a  variety  of  evidence  that  fire 
was  applied  to  sacrifices,  or  to  parts  of  sacrifices,  as  an 
alternative  to  their  consumption  by  the  worshippers,  before 
the  altar  became  a  hearth,  and  before  it  came  to  be  thought 
that  what  was  burned  was  conveyed,  as  etherealised  food, 
to  the  deity.  The  Hebrew  piacula  that  were  burned 
outside  the  camp  represent  an  older  form  of  ritual  than 
the  holocaust  on  the  altar,  and  the  thing  that  really  needs 
explanation  is  the  origin  of  the  latter. 

Originally  all  sacrifices  were  eaten  up  by  the  worshippers. 
By  and  by  certain  portions  of  ordinary  sacrifices,  and  the 
whole  flesh  of  extraordinary  sacrifices,  ceased  to  be  eaten. 
What  was  not  eaten  was  burned,  and  in  process  of  time  it 
came  to  be  burned  on  the  altar  and  regarded  as  made  over 
to  the  god.  Exactly  the  same  change  took  place  with  the 
sacrificial  blood,  except  that  here  there  is  no  -use  of  fire. 
In  the  oldest  sacrifices  the  blood  was  drunk  by  the 
worshippers,  and  after  it  ceased  to  be  drunk  it  was  all 
poured  out  at  the  altar.  The  tendency  evidently  was  to 
convey  directly  to  the  godhead  every  portion  of  a  sacrifice 


LECT.  XT.  BURNT-OFFERIXGS.  ?>*7l 

that  was  not  consumed  by  the  worshipper ;  but  how  did 
this  tendency  arise  ? 

I  daresay  that  some  of  you  will  be  inclined  to  say  tliat 
I  am  niakinL,'  a  difficulty  of  a  matter  that  needs  no  expla- 
nation. Is  it  not  obvious  that  a  sacrifice  is  a  consecrated 
thing,  that  consecrated  things  belong  to  the  god,  and  that 
the  altar  is  their  proper  place  ?  No  doubt  this  seems  to 
be  obvious,  but  it  is  precisely  the  things  that  seem  obvious 
which  in  a  subject  like  ours  require  the  most  careful 
scrutiny.  You  say  that  consecrated  things  belong  to  the 
god,  but  we  saw  long  ago  that  this  is  not  the  primitive 
idea  of  holiness.  A  holy  thing  is  taboo,  i.e.  man's  contact 
with  it  and  use  of  it  are  subject  to  certain  restrictions,  but 
this  idea  does  not  in  early  society  rest  on  the  belief  that  it 
is  the  property  of  the  gods.  Again  you  say  that  a  sacrifice 
is  a  consecrated  thing,  but  what  do  you  mean  by  this  ?  If 
you  mean  that  the  victim  became  holy  by  being  selected 
for  sacrifice  and  presented  at  the  altar,  you  have  not 
correctly  apprehended  the  nature  of  the  oldest  rites.  For 
iu  them  the  victim  was  naturally  holy,  not  in  virtue  of  its 
sacrificial  destination,  but  because  it  was  an  animal  of  holy 
kind.  So  long  as  tlie  natural  holiness  of  certain  animal 
species  was  a  living  element  in  popular  faith,  it  was  by  no 
means  obvious  that  holy  things  belong  to  the  god,  and 
should  find  their  ultimate  destination  at  the  altar. 

In  later  heathenism  the  conception  of  holy  kinds  and 
the  old  ideas  of  taboo  generally  had  become  obsolete,  and 
the  ritual  observances  founded  upon  them  were  no  longer 
understood.  And,  on  the  other  hand,  the  comparatively 
modern  idea  of  property  had  taken  shape,  and  began  to 
play  a  leading  part  both  in  religion  and  in  social  life.  The 
victim  was  no  longer  a  naturally  sacred  thing,  over  wliich 
man  had  very  limited  rights,  and  which  he  was  required  to 
treat   as  a  useful  friend  rather  than   a  chattel,  but  was 


372  GIFT   THEORY 


LECT.   XI. 


drawn  from  the  absolute  property  of  the  worshipper,  of 
which  he  had  a  right  to  dispose  as  he  pleased.  Before  its 
presentation  the  victim  was  a  common  thing,  and  it  was 
only  by  being  selected  for  sacrifice  that  it  became  holy. 
If,  therefore,  by  presenting  his  sheep  or  ox  at  the  altar,  the 
owner  lost  the  right  to  eat  or  sell  its  flesh,  the  explanation 
could  no  longer  be  sought  in  any  other  way  than  by  the 
assumption  that  he  had  surrendered  his  right  of  property 
to  another  party,  viz.,  to  the  god.  Consecration  was  in- 
terpreted to  mean  a  gift  of  man's  property  to  the  god,  and 
everything  that  was  withdrawn  by  consecration  from  the 
free  use  of  man  was  conceived  to  have  changed  its  owner. 
The  blood  and  fat  of  ordinary  sacrifices,  or  the  whole  flesh 
in  the  case  of  the  holocaust,  were  withdrawn  from  human 
use ;  it  was  held,  therefore,  that  they  had  become  the 
property  of  the  god,  and  were  reserved  for  his  use.  This 
being  so,  it  was  inevitable  that  the  burning  of  the  flesh 
and  fat  should  come  to  be  regarded  as  a  method  of  convey- 
ing them  to  the  god ;  and,  as  soon  as  this  conclusion  was 
drawn,  the  way  was  open  for  the  introduction  of  the 
modern  practice,  in  which  the  burning  took  place  on  the 
altar.  The  transformation  of  the  altar  into  the  hearth,  on 
which  the  sacrificial  flesh  was  consumed,  marks  the  final 
establishment  of  a  new  view  of  holiness,  based  on  the 
doctrine  of  property,  in  which  the  inviolability  of  holy 
things  is  no  longer  made  to  rest  on  their  intrinsic  super- 
natural quality,  but  upon  their  approjDriation  to  the  use 
and  service  of  the  gods.  The  success  of  this  new  view  is 
not  surprising,  for  in  every  department  of  early  society 
we  find  that  as  soon  as  the  notion  of  property,  and  of 
transfers  of  property  from  one  person  to  another,  gets  firm 
footing,  it  begins  to  swallow  up  all  earlier  formulas  for  the 
relations  of  persons  and  things.  But  the  adaptation  of 
old  institutions  to  new  ideas  can  seldom  be  effected  without 


LFXT.  XT.  OF   SACRIFICE.  373 

leaving  internal  contriidictions  between  the  old  and  the 
new,  wliich  ultimately  bring  about  the  complete  dissolu- 
tion of  the  incongruous  system.  The  new  wine  bursts  the 
old  bottles,  and  the  new  patch  tears  the  old  garment 
asunder. 

In  the  case  of  ordinary  sacrifices  the  tlieory  that  holy 
things  are  the  property  of  the  deity,  and  that  the  consecra- 
tion of  things  naturally  common  implies  a  gift  from  man 
to  his  god,  was  carried  out  witli  little  difliculty.  It  was 
understood  that  at  tlie  altar  tlie  wliole  victim  is  made 
over  to  the  deity  and  accepted  by  liim ;  but  that  the 
main  part  of  the  flesh  is  returned  to  the  worshipper,  to 
be  eaten  sacrificially  as  a  lioly  thing  at  tlie  table  of  the 
god.  This  explanation  went  well  enough  with  the  con- 
ception of  the  deity  as  a  king  or  great  lord,  whose  temple 
was  the  court  at  which  he  sat  to  receive  the  homage  of 
his  subjects  and  tenants,  and  to  entertain  them  with 
princely  hospitality.  But  it  did  not  satisfactorily  account 
for  the  most  characteristic  feature  in  sacrifice,  tlie  applica- 
tion of  the  blood  to  the  altar,  and  the  burning  of  the  fat 
on  the  sacred  hearth.  For  these,  according  to  the  received 
interpretation,  were  the  food  of  the  deity  ;  and  so  it 
appeared  that  the  god  was  dependent  on  man  for  his 
daily  nourishment,  although,  on  the  other  hand,  all  the 
good  things  that  man  enjoyed  he  owed  to  the  gift  and 
favour  of  his  god.  Tliis  is  the  weak  point  in  the  current 
view  of  sacrifice  which  roused  the  indignation  of  the  author 
of  Psalm  1.,  and  afforded  so  much  merriment  to  later 
satirists  like  Lucian.  The  difficulty  might  be  explained 
away  by  a  spiritualising  interpretation,  which  treated  tlie 
material  altar  gift  as  a  mere  symbol,  and  urged  that  the 
true  value  of  the  offering  lay  in  the  liomage  of  the 
worshipper's  heart,  expressed  in  the  traditional  oblation. 
But  the   religion   of   the   masses   never   took   so  subtle  a 


374  GIFT    THEORY 


LECT.   XI. 


view  as  this,  and  to  the  majority  of  the  worshippers  even 
in  Israel,  before  the  exile,  the  dominant  idea  in  the 
ritual  was  tliat  the  material  oblation  afforded  a  physical 
satisfaction  to  the  god,  and  that  copious  oflerings  were 
an  infallible  means  of  keeping  him  in  good  humour.  So 
long  as  sacrifice  was  exclusively  or  mainly  a  social  service, 
performed  by  the  community,  the  crassness  of  this  con- 
ception found  its  counterpoise  in  the  ideas  of  religious 
fellowship  that  have  been  expounded  in  Lecture  VII.^ 
But  in  private  sacrifice  there  was  little  or  nothing  to 
raise  the  transaction  above  the  level  of  a  mere  bargain, 
in  which  no  ethical  consideration  was  involved,  but  the 
good  understanding  between  the  worshipper  and  his  god 
was  maintained  by  reciprocal  friendly  offices  of  a  purely 
material  kind.  This  superficial  view  of  religion  served 
very  well  in  times  of  prosperity,  but  it  could  not  stand 
the  strain  of  serious  and  prolonged  adversity,  when 
it  became  plain  that  religion  had  to  reckon  with  the 
sustained  displeasure  of  the  gods.  In  such  circumstances 
men  were  forced  to  conclude  that  it  was  useless  to  attempt 
to  appease  the  divine  wa-ath  by  gifts  of  things  which  the 
gods,  as  lords  of  the  earth,  already  possessed  in  abundance. 
It  was  not  only  Jehovah  who  could  say,  "  I  will  take  no 
bullock  out  of  thy  house,  nor  he -goats  from  thy  folds; 
for  every  beast  of  the  forest  is  mine,  and  the  cattle  on  a 
thousand  hills."  The  Baahm  too  were  in  their  way  lords 
of  nature,  and  even  from  the  standpoint  of  lieathenism 
it  was  absurd  to  suppose  tliat  they  were  really  dependent 
on  the  tribute  of  their  worshippers.  In  short,  the  gift- 
theory  of  sacrifice  was  not  enough  to  account  for  the  rule 
that  sacrifice  is  the  sole  and  sufficient  form  of  every  act 
of  worship,  even  in  religions  which  had  not  realised,  witli 
the  Hebrew  fjrophets,  that  what  the  true  God   requires  of 

^  Supra,  p.  245  sqq. 


LECT.  XI.  OF    SACRIFICE.  375 

His  worshippers  is   not   a   material  oblation,    but  "  to  do 
justice,  and  love  mercy,  and  walk  humbly  with  thy  God." 

If  the  tlieory  of  sacrifice  as  a  gift  or  tribute,  taken  from 
man's  property  and  conveyed  to  the  deity,  was  inadequate 
even  as  applied  to  ordinary  oblations,  it  was  evidently  still 
more  inadequate  as  applied  to  the  holocaust,  and  especially 
to  human  sacrifice.  It  is  commonly  supposed  that  the 
holocaust  was  more  powerful  than  ordinary  sacrifices, 
Ijecause  the  gift  to  the  god  was  greater.  But  even  in 
ordinary  sacrifices  the  whole  victim  was  consecrated  and 
made  over  to  the  god ;  only  in  the  holocaust  the  god  kept 
everything  to  himself,  while  in  ordinary  sacrifices  he 
invited  the  worshipper  to  dine  with  him.  It  does  not 
appear  that  there  is  any  good  reason,  on  the  doctrine  of 
sacrificial  tribute,  why  this  difference  should  be  to  the 
advantage  of  the  holocaust.  In  the  case  of  human  sacri- 
fices  the  gift-theory  led  to  results  which  were  not  only 
absurd  but  revolting  —  absurd,  since  it  does  not  follow 
that  because  a  man's  first-born  son  is  dearer  to  himself 
than  all  his  wealth,  the  life  of  that  son  is  the  most 
valuable  gift  that  he  can  offer  to  his  god  ;  and  revolting, 
when  it  came  to  be  supposed  that  the  sacrifice  of  children 
as  fire-offerings  was  a  gift  of  food  to  a  deity  who  delighted 
in  human  flesh.^  So  detestable  a  view  of  the  nature  of 
the  gods  cannot  fairly  be  said  to  correspond  to  the  general 
character  of  the  old  Semitic  religions,  which  ought  to  be 
judged  of  by  the  ordiuary  forms  of  worship  and  not  by 
exceptional  rites.  If  the  gods  had  been  habitually 
conceived  as  cannibal  monsters,  the  general  type  of  ritual 
would  have  been  gloomy  and  timorous,  whereas  really  it 
was  full  of  joyous  and  even  careless  confidence.  I 
conclude,  therefore,  that  the  child-devouring  King  of  the 
later  Moloch-worship  owes  his  cannibal  attributes,  not  to 

1  Ezek.  xvi.  20,  xxiii.  37. 


376  GIFT    THEORY 


LECT.   XI. 


the  fundamental  principles  of  Semitic  religion,  but  to  false 
logic,  straining  the  gift-theory  of  sacrifice  to  cover  rites  to 
which  it  had  no  legitimate  application.  And  this  con- 
clusion is  justified  when  we  find  thatj  though  human 
sacrifices  were  not  unknown  in  older  times,  the  ancient 
ritual  was  to  burn  them  without  the  camp — a  clear  proof 
that  their  flesh  was  not  originally  regarded  as  a  food- 
offering  to  the  deity.^ 

On    the    whole,    then,    the     introduction     of    ideas    of 
property  into  the  relations    between   men  and  their  gods 
seems  to  have  been  one   of  the  most  fatal  aberrations  in 
the  development  of  ancient  religion.     In    the  beginnings 
of  human  thought,  the  natural  and  the  supernatural,  the 
material   and    the    spiritual,    were    confounded,    and    this 
confusion  gave   rise   to  the  old  notion  of  holiness,  which 
turned  on  the  idea  that  supernatural  influences  emanated, 
like   an  infection,  from   certain   material   things.     It   was 
necessary  to  human   progress  that  this   crude   conception 
should  be  superseded,  and  at  first  sight  we  are  disposed  to 
see  nothing  but  good  in   the  introduction    of   the  notion 
that  holy  things   are  forbidden   to  man  because  they  are 
reserved  for  the  use  of  the    gods,   and    that    the   danger 
associated  with  illegitimate  invasion  of  them  is  not  due  to 
any  deadly  supernatural  influence,  directly  proceeding  from 
the  holy  object,  but  to  the  wrath  of  a  personal  god,  who 
will  not  suffer  his  property  to  be  tampered  with.      In  one 
direction  this  modification  was  undoubtedly  beneficial,  for 
the  vague  dread  of  the  unknown   supernatural,  which  in 
savage  society  is   so  strong  that  it   paralyses   progress  of 
every  kind,  and  turns  man  aside  from  his  legitimate  task 
of  subduing  nature  to  his  use,  receives  a  fatal  blow  as  soon 
as  all  supernatural  processes  are  referred  to  the  will  and 

^  Compare  the  remarks  on  the  sacrifice  of  the  first-born,  infra,  Additiona 
Note  F. 


LECT.   XI. 


OF   SACRIFICE.  377 


power    of    known    deities,   whose    converse    willi    niiin   is 
guided   by   iixed    laws.      ]'>ut  it  was    in    the    Last    degree 
unfortunate  that  these  fixed  laws  were  taken  to  be  largely 
based    on   the   principle  of    property  ;   for  the    notion   of 
property  materialises  everything   that   it   touches,  and   its 
introduction  into  religion    made  it  impossible    to  rise  to 
spiritual  conceptions  of  the  deity  and  his  relations  to  man 
on  the  basis  of  traditional  religion.      On  the  other  hand, 
the  more  ancient  idea  of  living  communion  between  the 
god  and  his  worshippers,  which  fell  more  and    more  into 
the    background    under     the     theory    of    sacrificial    gifts, 
contained  an  element  of  permanent  truth  wrapped  up  in 
a  very  crude   embodiment,   and    to    it    therefore    all   the 
efforts  of   ancient   heathenism    towards    a   better  way   of 
converse     with    the     divine     powers     attach     themselves, 
taking    hold    of    those     forms    and     features    of    sacrifice 
which  evidently  involved  something  more  than  the  mere 
jjresentation  to  the  deity  of  a  material  tribute.     And  as 
the  need  for  something  more  than  the  ordinary  altar  gifts 
supplied  was  not  habitually  present  to  men's  minds,  but 
forced  itself  upon  them  in  grave  crises  of  life,  and  particu- 
larly   in    times   of    danger,   when    the   god  seemed   to  be 
angry   with   his  people,   or  when   at  any  rate  it   was  of 
importance  to  make  sure  that  he  was  not  angry,  all  the 
aspects  of  worship  that  go  beyond   the  payment  of  gifts 
and  tribute  came  to  be  looked  upon  as  having  a  special 
atoning  character,  that  is,  as  being  directed  not  so  much 
to  maintain  a  good  understanding  with  the   deity,  as  to 
renew  it  when  it  was  interrupted. 

When  the  idea  of  atonement  is  taken  in  this  very 
general  form,  there  is  obviously  no  sharp  line  between 
atoning  and  ordinary  sacrifices ;  for  in  ordinary  life  the 
means  that  are  used  to  keep  a  man  in  good  humour  will 
often  suffice  to  restore  him  to  good  humour,   if  they  are 


378  GIFTS   AND 


LECT.    XI. 


sedulously  employed.  On  this  analogy  a  mere  gift, 
presented  at  a  suitable  moment,  or  of  greater  value  than 
usual,  was  often  thought  sufficient  to  appease  the  divine 
wrath ;  a  general  atoning  force  was  ascribed  to  all  sacri- 
fices, and  the  value  of  special  piacula  was  often  estimated 
simply  by  the  consideration  that  they  cost  the  worshipper 
more  than  an  everyday  offering.  We  have  seen  that  even 
human  sacrifices  were  sometimes  considered  from  this 
point  of  view ;  and  in  general  the  idea  that  every  offence 
against  the  deity  can  be  appraised,  and  made  good  by  a 
payment  of  a  certain  value,  was  not  inconsistent  with  the 
principles  of  ancient  law,  which  deals  with  offences  against 
persons  on  the  doctrine  of  retaliation,  but  admits  to  an 
almost  unlimited  extent  the  doctrine  that  the  injured 
jDarty  may  waive  his  right  of  retaliation  in  consideration 
of  a  payment  by  the  offender.  But  it  is  not  the  doctrine 
of  ancient  law  that  an  injured  party  can  be  compelled  to 
accept  material  compensation  for  an  offence ;  and  therefore, 
even  on  ordinary  human  analogies,  no  religious  system 
could  be  regarded  as  complete  which  had  not  more 
powerful  means  of  conjuring  the  divine  displeasure  than 
were  afforded  by  the  mere  offer  of  a  gift  or  payment. 
In  point  of  fact  all  ancient  religions  had  sacrificial 
ceremonies  of  this  more  powerful  kind,  in  which  the 
notion  of  pleasing  the  god  by  a  gift  either  found  no 
expression  at  all,  or  evidently  did  not  exhaust  the  signifi- 
cance of  the  ritual ;  and  these  are  the  sacrifices  to  which 
the  distinctive  name  of  piacula  is  properly  applied. 

It  is  sometimes  supposed  that  special  piacula  did  not 
exist  in  the  older  Semitic  religions,  and  were  invented  for 
the  first  time  when  the  gift -theory  of  sacrifice  began  to 
break  down.  But  this  supposition  is  incredible  in  itself, 
and  is  not  consistent  with  the  historical  evidence.  It  is 
incredible  that  a  gift  should   have  been  the  oldest  known 


LF.CT.  XI.  SPECIAL    PIACULA.  379 

way  of  reconciling  an  offended  god,  for  in  ordinary  life 
atonement  by  fine  came  in  at  a  relatively  late  date,  and 
never  entirely  supersedctl  the  lex  talionis ;  and  it  is 
certain,  from  what  we  have  learned  by  observing  the  old 
form  of  piacular  holocausts,  that  these  sacrifices  were  not 
originally  regarded  as  payments  to  the  god,  but  arose  on 
quite  different  lines,  as  an  independent  development  of  the 
primitive  sacrifice  of  communion,  whose  atoning  efficacy 
rested  on  the  persuasion  that  those  in  whose  veins  the 
same  life  -  blood  circulates  cannot  be  other  than  friends, 
bound  to  serve  each  other  in  all  the  offices  of  brother- 
hood. 

It  has  appeared  in  the  course  of  our  inquiry  that  two 
kinds  of  sacrifice,  which  present  features  inconsistent  with 
the  gift-theory,  continued  to  be  practised  by  the  ancient 
Semites ;  and  to  both  kinds  there  was  ascribed  a  special 
efficacy  in  persuading  or  constraining  the  favour  of  the 
gods.  The  first  kind  is  the  mystic  sacrifice,  represented  by 
a  small  class  of  exceptional  rites,  in  which  the  victim  was 
drawn  from  some  species  of  animals  that  retained  even  in 
modern  times  their  ancient  repute  of  natural  holiness. 
Sacrifices  of  this  sort  could  never  fall  under  the  gift-theory, 
for  creatures  naturally  holy  are  not  man's  property,  but,  so 
far  as  they  have  an  owner  at  all,  are  the  property  of  the 
god.  The  significance  attached  to  these  sacrifices,  and  the 
nature  of  their  peculiar  efficacy,  has  already  received 
suflficient  attention.  The  other  kind  of  offering  which  was 
thought  of  as  something  more  than  a  mere  gift,  consisted 
of  holocausts,  and  other  sacrifices,  whose  flesh  was  not  con- 
veyed to  the  god  and  eaten  at  his  table,  but  burned  without 
the  camp,  or  buried,  or  cast  away  in  a  desert  place.  This 
kind  of  sacrifice  we  have  already  studied  from  a  formal 
point  of  view,  considering  the  way  in  which  its  ritual  was 
differentiated  from  the  old  communion  sacrifice,  and  also 


><S0  MEANING    OP 


LECT.   XI. 


the  way  in  which  most  sacrifices  of  the  kind  were  ulti- 
mately brought  under  the  class  of  sacrificial  gifts,  by  the 
introduction  of  the  practice  of  burning  the  flesh  on  the 
altar  or  burying  it  in  the  ghalghah  ;  but  we  have  not  yet 
considered  the  way  in  which  these  successive  modifications 
of  ritual  were  interpreted  and  made  to  fit  into  the  general 
progress  of  social  institutions  and  ideas.  A  consideration 
of  this  side  of  the  subject  is  necessary  to  complete  our 
study  of  the  principles  of  ancient  sacrifice,  and  to  it  the 
remainder  of  the  present  lecture  will  be  devoted. 

It  must,  however,  be  remembered  that  in  ancient  religion 
there  was  no  authoritative  interpretation  of  ritual.  It  was 
imperative  that  certain  things  should  be  done,  but  every 
man  was  free  to  put  his  own  meaning  on  what  was  done. 
Now  the  more  complicated  ritual  prestations,  to  which 
the  elaborate  piacular  services  of  later  times  must  be 
reckoned,  were  not  forms  invented,  once  for  all,  to  express  a 
definite  system  of  ideas,  but  natural  growths,  which  were 
slowly  developed  through  many  centuries,  and  in  their 
final  form  bore  the  imprint  of  a  variety  of  influences,  to 
which  they  had  been  subjected  from  age  to  age  under  the 
changing  conditions  of  human  life  and  social  order.  Every 
rite  therefore  lent  itself  to  more  than  one  interpretation, 
according  as  this  or  that  aspect  of  it  was  seized  upon  as 
the  key  to  its  meaning.  Under  such  circumstances  we 
must  not  attempt  to  fix  a  definite  interpretation  on  any  of 
the  developments  of  ancient  ritual ;  all  that  we  can  hope 
to  do  is  to  trace  in  the  ceremonial  the  influence  of  succes- 
sive phases  of  thought,  the  presence  of  which  is  attested 
to  us  by  other  movements  in  the  structure  of  ancient  society, 
or  conversely  to  show  how  features  in  ritual,  of  which  the 
historical  origin  had  been  forgotten,  were  accounted  for  on 
more  modern  principles,  and  used  to  give  support  to  new 
ideas  that  were  struggling  for  practical  recognition. 


LECT.  XI.  SPECIAL   PIACULA.  381 

From  the  analysis  of  the  ritual  of  holocausts  and  other 
piacula  given  in  the  last  two  lectures,  it  appears  that 
through  all  the  varieties  of  atoning  ceremony  there  runs 
a  common  principle ;  the  victim  is  sacrosanct,  and  the 
peculiar  value  of  the  ceremony  lies  in  the  operation  per- 
formed on  its  life,  whether  that  life  is  merely  conveyed  to 
the  god  on  the  altar,  or  is  also  applied  to  the  worshippers 
by  the  sprinkling  of  the  blood,  or  some  other  lustral 
ceremony.  Both  these  features  are  nothing  more  than 
inheritances  from  the  most  primitive  form  of  sacramental 
communion ;  and  in  the  oldest  sacrifices  their  meaning  is 
perfectly  transparent  and  unambiguous,  for  the  ritual 
exactly  corresponds  with  the  primitive  ideas,  that  holiness 
means  kinship  to  the  worshippers  and  their  god,  that  all 
sacred  relations  and  all  moral  obligations  depend  on 
physical  unity  of  life,  and  that  unity  of  physical  life  can 
be  created  or  reinforced  by  common  participation  in  living 
flesh  and  blood.  At  this  earliest  stage  the  atonimr  force 
of  sacrifice  is  purely  physical,  and  consists  in  the  redinte- 
gration of  tlie  congenital  physical  Ijond  of  kinship,  on 
whicli  the  good  understanding  between  the  god  and  his 
worshippers  ultimately  rests.  But  in  the  later  stage  of 
religion,  in  which  sacrifices  of  sacrosanct  victims  and 
purificatory  offerings  are  exceptional  rites,  these  anti(]^ue 
ideas  were  no  longer  intelligible  ;  and  in  ordinary  sacrifices 
those  features  of  the  old  ritual  were  dropped  or  modified 
which  gave  expression  to  obsolete  notions  about  holiness, 
and  the  physical  transfer  of  holy  life  from  the  victim 
to  the  worshippers.  Here,  therefore,  the  question  arises 
why  that  which  had  ceased  to  be  intelligible  was  still 
preserved  in  a  peculiar  class  of  sacrifices.  The  obvious 
answer  is  that  it  was  preserved  by  the  force  of  use  and 
precedent. 

It    is    common,    in   discussions    of    the    significance    of 


382  ORIGIN   OF  LECT.  XI. 

piaciilar  ritual,  to  begin  with  the  consideration  that  piacula 
are  atonements  for  sin,  and  to  assume  that  the  ritual  was 
devised  with  a  view  to  the  purchase  of  divine  forgiveness. 
But  this  is  to  take  the  thing  by  the  wrong  handle.  The 
characteristic  features  in  piacular  sacrifice  are  not  the 
invention  of  a  later  a^e,  in  which  the  sense  of  sin  and 
divine  wrath  was  strong,  but  are  features  carried  over 
from  a  very  primitive  type  of  religion,  in  which  the  sense 
of  sin,  in  any  proper  sense  of  the  word,  did  not  exist  at 
all,  and  the  whole  object  of  ritual  was  to  maintain  the 
bond  of  physical  holiness  that  kept  the  religious  community 
together.  What  we  have  to  explain  is  not  the  origin  of 
the  sacrificial  forms  that  later  ages  called  piacular,  but  the 
way  in  which  the  old  type  of  sacrifice  came  to  branch  off 
into  two  distinct  types.  And  here  we  must  consider  that, 
even  in  tolerably  advanced  societies,  the  distinction  between 
piacular  and  ordinary  offerings  long  continued  to  be  mainly 
one  of  ritual,  and  that  the  former  were  not  so  much 
sacrifices  for  sin,  as  sacrifices  in  wliich  the  ceremonial 
forms,  observed  at  the  altar,  continued  to  express  the 
original  idea  that  the  victim's  life  was  sacrosanct,  and 
in  some  way  cognate  to  the  life  of  the  god  and  his 
worshippers.  Thus,  among  the  Hebrews  of  the  pre- 
prophetic  period,  it  certainly  appears  that  a  peculiar  potency 
was  assigned  to  holocausts  and  other  exceptional  sacrifices, 
as  a  means  of  conjuring  the  divine  displeasure ;  but  a 
certain  atoning  force  was  ascribed  to  all  sacrifices ;  and, 
on  the  other  hand,  sacrifices  of  piacular  form  and  force 
were  offered  on  many  occasions  when  we  cannot  suppose 
the  sense  of  sin  or  of  divine  anger  to  have  been  present  in 
any  extraordinary  degree.  For  example,  it  was  the  custom 
to  open  a  campaign  with  a  burnt -offering,  which  in  old 
Israel  was  the  most  solemn  piaculum ;  but  this  did  not 
imply  any  feeling  that  war  was  a  divine  judgment  and  a 


LECT.  XI.  SPECIAL   PIACULA.  383 


sign  of  the  anger  of  Jehovcah.^  It  appears  rather  that  the 
sacriUcG  was  properly  the  consecration  of  the  warriors ;  for 
the  Hebrew  phrase  for  opening  war  is  "  to  consecrate  war  " 
(non^n  Dnp),  and  warriors  are  consecrated  persons,  subject 
to  special  taboos."  Here,  therefore,  it  lies  near  at  hand  to 
suppose  that  the  holocaust  is  simply  the  modification,  on 
lines  which  have  been  already  explained,  of  an  ancient 
form  of  sacramental  communion;  and  this  is  confirmed 
by  comparison  with  the  Arabian  use,  where,  at  the  open- 
ing of  a  campaign,  victims  are  slain  and  the  living  blood 
applied  to  the  tents  of  the  warriors.'^  The  Greeks  in  like 
manner  commenced  their  wars  with  piacular  sacrifices  of 
the  most  solemn  kind;  indeed,  according  to  Phylarchus/ 
a  human  victim  was  at  one  time  deemed  indispensable  ; 
but  this  probably  means  no  more  than  that  the  offerings 
made  on  such  an  occasion  were  of  the  exceptional  and 
sacrosanct  character  with  which  legends  of  actual  human 
sacrifice  are  so  frequently  associated.  One  illustration  of 
Phylarchus's  statement  will  occur  to  every  one,  viz.  the 
sacrifice  of  Iphigenia ;  and  here  it  is  to  be  noted  that, 
while  all  forms  of  the  legend  are  agreed  that  Agamemnon 
must  have  committed  some  deadly  sin,  before  so  terrible  an 
offering  was  required  of  him,  there  is  no  agreement  as  to 

^  The  burnt-ofrei-iiig  at  the  opening  of  a  campaign  appears  in  Juilg.  vi.  20 
(cf.  ver.  26),  xx.  26  ;  1  Sam.  vii.  9,  xiii.  10.  In  Jndg.  xi.  31  we  have, 
instead  of  a  sacrifice  before  the  war,  a  vow  to  offer  a  liolocanst  on  its  success- 
ful termination.  The  view  taken  by  the  last  redactor  of  the  historical 
books  (Judg.,  fc'ani.,  Kings),  that  the  wars  of  Israel  with  its  neighbours 
were  always  chastisements  for  sin,  is  not  ancient ;  cf.  Gen.  xxvii.  29,  xlix.  8  ; 
Xuml).  xxiv.  24  ;  Deut.  xxxiii.  29. 

-  Isa.  xiii.  3  ;  Jer.  li.  8.     See  sujira,  ]>.  148,  and  Additional  Note  D. 

» Supra,  p.  326.  I  conjecture  tliat  the  form  of  gathering  warriors 
together  by  sending  round  portions  of  a  victim  that  has  been  liewn  into 
pieces  (1  Sam.  xi.  7  ;  cf.  Judg.  xix.  29)  had  originally  a  sacramental  sense, 
similar  to  that  expressed  by  the  covenant  form  in  which  the  victim  is  cut 
in  twain  ;  cf.  Additional  Note  I,  and  the  Scythian  custom  noticed  by  Luciaii, 
Toxaris,  §  48. 

'  Ap.  Porph.,  De  Abul.  ii.  56. 


384  ORIGIN    OF 


LECT.   XI. 


what  his  sin  was.  It  is  not  therefore  unreasonable  to 
think  that  in  the  original  story  the  piaculum  was  simply 
the  ordinary  preliminary  to  a  campaign,  and  that  later 
ages  could  not  understand  why  such  a  sacrifice  should 
be  made,  except  to  atone  for  mortal  guilt.^ 

If,  now,  it  be  asked  why  the  ordinary  preliminary  to  a 
campaign  was  a  sacrifice  of  the  exceptionally  solemn  kind 
which  in  later  times  was  deemed  to  have  a  special  reference 
to  sin,  the  answer  must  be  that  the  ritual  was  fixed  by 
immemorial  precedent,  going  back  to  the  time  when  all 
sacrifices  were  of  the  sacramental  type,  and  involved  the 
shedding  of  a  sacrosanct  life.  At  that  time  every  sacrifice 
was  an  awful  mystery,  and  not  to  be  performed  except  on 
great  occasions,  when  it  was  most  necessary  that  the  bond 
of  kindred  obligation  between  every  member  of  the  com- 
munity, divine  and  human,  should  be  as  strong  and  fresh 
as  possible.  The  outbreak  of  war  was  plainly  such  an 
occasion,  and  it  is  .  no  hazardous  conjecture  that  the  rule 
of  commencing  a  campaign  with  sacrifice  dates  from  the 
most  primitive  times.'-^  Accordingly  the  ceremonial,  to  be 
observed  in  sacrifice  on  such  an  occasion,  would  be  pro- 
tected by  well-established  tradition,  and  the  victim  would 
continue  to  be  treated  at  the  altar  with  all  the  old  ritual 
forms  which  implied  that  its  blood  was  holy  and  akin  to 
man's,  long  after  the  general  sanctity  of  all  animals  of 
sacrificial  kind  had  ceased  to  be  acknowledged  in  daily 
life.  And  in  the  same  way  sacrifices  of  exceptional  form, 
in  which  the  victim  was  treated  as  a  human  being,  or  its 
blood  was  applied  in  a  primitive  ceremonial  to  the  persons 

1  The  opening  of  a  campaign  appears  also  in  Africa  as  one  of  the  rare 
occasions  that  justify  the  slaughter  of  a  victim  from  the  tribal  herds ;  see 
above,  p.  279. 

'  There  is  also  some  reason  to  think  that  in  very  ancient  times  a  sacrifice 
was  appointed  to  be  offered  after  a  victory.  See  Additional  Note  N,  Sacrifice 
by  Victorious  Warriors. 


LECT.  XI.  SPECIAL   PIACULA.  385 

of  the  worshippers,  or  its  flesh  was  regarded  as  too  sacred 
to  be  eaten,  would  continue  to  be  offered  on  all  occasions 
which  were  marked  out,  as  demanding  a  sacrifice,  by  some 
very  ancient  rule,  dating  from  the  time  when  the  natural 
sanctity  of  sacrificial  kinds  was  still  recognised.  In  such 
cases  the  ancient  ceremonial  would  be  protected  by  im- 
memorial custom ;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  there  would 
be  nothing  to  prevent  a  more  modern  type  of  ritual  from 
coming  into  use  on  occasions  for  which  there  was  no 
ancient  sacrificial  precedent,  e.g.  on  such  occasions  as  arose 
for  the  first  time  under  the  conditions  of  agricultural  life, 
when  the  old  sanctity  of  domestic  animals  was  very  much 
broken  down.  Sacrifices  were  vastly  more  frequent  with 
the  agricultural  than  with  the  pastoral  nations  of  antiquity, 
but,  among  the  older  agricultural  Semites,  the  occasions 
that  called  for  sacrifices  of  exceptional  or  piacular  form 
were  not  so  numerous  that  they  may  not  fairly  be  regarded 
as  broadly  corresponding  to  the  rare  occasions  for  which 
the  death  of  a  victim  w^as  already  prescribed  by  the  rules 
of  their  nomadic  ancestors. 

This,  it  may  be  said,  is  no  more  than  a  hypothesis,  but 
it  satisfies  the  conditions  of  a  legitimate  hypothesis,  by 
postulating  the  operation  of  no  unknown  or  uncertain 
cause,  but  only  of  that  force  of  precedent  whicli  in  all 
times  has  been  so  strong  to  keep  alive  religious  forms  of 
which  the  original  meaning  is  lost.  And  in  certain  cases, 
at  any  rate,  it  is  very  evident  that  rites  of  exceptional 
form,  whicli  later  ages  generally  connected  with  ideas  of 
sin  and  atonement,  were  merely  the  modern  representatives 
of  primitive  sacraments,  kept  up  through  sheer  force  of 
habit,  without  any  deeper  meaning  corresponding  to  the 
peculiar  solemnity  of  their  form.  Thus  the  annual  piacula 
that  were  celebrated,  with  exceptional  rites,  by  most  nations 

of  antiquity  are  not  necessarily  to  be  regarded  as  liaving 

2  B 


386  ANNUAL 


LECT.   XI. 


their  first  ori<2iu  in  a  growinsr  sense  of  sin  or  fear  of  divine 
wrath, — although  these  reasons  operated  in  later  times  to 
multiply  such  acts  of  service  and  increase  the  importance 
attached  to  them, — but  are  often  nothing  more  than  sur- 
vivals of  ancient  annual  sacrifices  of  communion  in  the 
body  and  blood  of  a  sacred  animal.  For  in  some  of  these 
rites,  as  we  have  seen  in  Lecture  VIII.,^  the  form  of  com- 
munion in  flesh  too  holy  to  be  eaten  except  in  a  sacred 
mystery  is  retained ;  and,  where  this  is  not  the  case,  there 
is  at  least  some  feature  in  the  annual  piaculum  which 
reveals  its  connection  with  the  oldest  type  of  sacrifice. 
It  is  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  annual  religious  feasts  date 
only  from  the  beginnings  of  agricultural  life,  with  its 
yearly  round  of  seed-time  and  harvest ;  for  in  all  parts  of 
the  world  annual  sacraments  are  found,  and  that  not 
merely  among  pastoral  races,  but  even  in  rude  hunting 
tribes  that  have  not  emerged  from  the  totem  stage."  And 
though  some  of  these  totem  sacraments  involve  actual 
communion  in  the  flesh  and  blood  of  the  sacred  animal, 
the  commoner  case,  even  in  this  primitive  stage  of  society, 
is  that  the  theanthropic  victim  is  deemed  too  holy  to  be 
eaten,  and  therefore,  as  in  the  majority  of  Semitic  piacula, 
is  burned,  buried,  or  cast  into  a  stream.^  It  is  certainly 
illegitimate  to  connect  these  very  primitive  piacula  with 
any  explicit  ideas  of  sin  and  forgiveness ;  they  have  their 

^  Supra,  p.  272  ,^qq. 

-  For  examples  of  annual  sacraments  by  sacrifice  of  tlie  totem,  see  Frazer, 
Totemism,  p.  48,  and  .•iiq^ra,  p.  277,  note  1. 

^  I  apprehend  that  in  most  climates  the  vicissitudes  of  the  seasons  are 
certainly  not  less  important  to  the  savage  huntsman  or  to  the  pastoral 
barbarian  than  to  the  more  civilised  tiller  of  the  soil.  From  Douglity's 
account  of  the  pastoral  tribes  of  the  Arabian  desert,  and  also  from  what 
Agatharchides  tells  us  of  the  lierdsmen  by  the  Red  Sea,  we  perceive  that 
in  the  purely  pastoral  life  the  seasons  when  pasture  fails  are  annual  periods 
of  semi-starvation  for  man  and  beast.  Among  still  ruder  races,  like  the 
Australians,  who  have  no  domestic  animals,  the  difference  of  tlie  seasons  is 
yet  more  painfully  felt ;  so  much  so,  indeed,  that  in  some  parts  of  Australia 


LiXT.  xr.  PIACULA.  P. 8 7 

origin  in  a  purely  naturalistic  conception  of  holiness,  and 
mean  nothing  more  than  that  the  mystic  unity  of  life  in 
the  religious  community  is  liable  to  wear  out,  and  nnist  be 
revived  and  strengthened  from  time  to  time. 

Among  the  annual  piacula  of  the  more  advanced  Semites 
which,  though  they  are  not  mystical  sacrifices  of  an  "  un- 
clean "  animal,  yet  bear  on  their  face  the  marks  of  extreme 
antiquity,  the  first  place  belongs  to  the  Hebrew  Passover, 
held  in  the  spring  month  Nisan,  where  the  primitive 
character  of  the  offering  appears  not  only  from  the  details 
of  the  ritual,^  but  from  the  coincidence  of  its  season  with 
that  of  the  Arabian  sacrifices  in  the  month  Rajab. 
Similarly  in  Cyprus,  on  the  first  of  April,  a  sheep  was 
offered  to  Astarte  (Aphrodite)  with  ritual  of  a  character 
evidently  piacular.2  At  Hierapolis,  in  like  manner,  the 
chief  feast  of  the  year  was  the  vernal  ceremony  of  the 
Pyre,  in  which  animals  were  burned  alive — an  antique 
ritual  which  has  been  illustrated  in  the  last  lecture.  And 
again,  among  the  Harranians,  the  first  half  of  Nisan  was 
marked  by  a  series  of  exceptional  sacrifices  of  piacular 
colour.'^ 

So  remarkable  a  concurrence  in  the  season  of  the  great 
annual  piacular  rites  of  Semitic  communities  leaves  little 
doubt    as    to    the    extreme    antiquity    of    the    institution. 

children  are  not  born  except  at  one  season  of  tlie  year  ;  tlie  annual  changes 
of  nature  have  impressed  themselves  on  the  life  of  man  to  a  degree  hardly 
conceivable  to  us.  In  pastoral  Arabia  domestic  cattle  habitually  yean  in 
the  brief  season  of  the  spring  pasture  (Doughty,  i.  429),  and  this  would 
serve  to  fi.\  an  annual  season  of  sacrifice. 

^  Supra,  p.  326.  Note  also  that  the  head  and  the  inwards  have  to  bo 
eaten,  i.e.  the  special  seats  of  life  (Ex.  xii.  9). 

'■^  Lydus,  De  Meiii.  iv.  45  ;  cf.  Additional  Note  11.  Tlie  xulmv  marks 
the  sacrifice  as  piacular,  whether  my  conjecture  xuiiu  i(r?ifra<r/u.'tvoi  for  *«?/« 
t<r«£Taff'/tsK)v  is  accepted  or  not. 

*  Fihr'mt,  p.  322.  Traces  of  the  sacredncss  of  the  month  Nisan  are  found 
also  at  Palmyra  (A'wc.  Brit,  xviii.  199,  note  2),  and  among  the  Nabata-'ans, 
as  Berger  has  inferred  from  a  study  of  the  inscriptions  of  Madain-Sfdih. 


388  ANNUAL 


LECT.    XI. 


Otherwise  tlie  season  of  the  annual  piacula  is  not  material 
to  our  present  purpose,  except  in  so  far  as  its  coincidence 
with  the  yeaning  time  appears  to  be  connected  with  the 
frequent  use  of  sucking  lambs  and  other  very  young 
animals  as  piacular  victims.  This  point,  however,  seems 
to  be  of  some  importance  as  an  indirect  evidence  of  the 
antiquity  of  annual  piacula.  The  reason  often  given  for 
the  sacrifice  of  very  young  animals,  that  a  man  thus  got 
rid  of  a  sacred  obligation  at  the  very  cheapest  rate,  is  not 
one  that  can  be  seriously  maintained ;  while,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  analogy  of  infanticide,  which  in  many  savage 
countries  is  not  regarded  as  murder,  if  it  be  performed 
immediately  after  birth,  makes  it  very  intelligible  that,  in 
those  primitive  times  when  a  domestic  animal  had  a  life 
as  sacred  as  that  of  a  tribesman,  new-born  calves  or  lambs 
should  be  selected  for  sacrifice.  The  selection  of  an  annual 
season  of  sacrifice  coincident  with  tlie  yeaning-time  may 
therefore  be  plausibly  referred  to  the  time  when  sacrificial 
slaughter  was  still  a  rare  and  awful  event,  involving 
responsibilities  which  the  worshippers  were  anxious  to 
reduce,  by  every  device,  within  the  narrowest  possible  limits. 
The  point,  which  I  took  a  little  time  ago,  that  sacrifices 
of  piacular  form  are  not  necessarily  associated  with  a  sense 
of  sin,  or  even  with  a  sense  of  the  anger  of  the  god,  comes 
out  very  clearly  in  the  case  of  annual  piacula.  Among 
the  Hebrews,  under  the  Law,  the  annual  expiation  on  the 
great  Day  of  Atonement  was  directed  to  cleanse  the  people 
from  all  their  sins,^  i.e.  according  to  the  Mishnic  interpre- 
tation, to  purge  away  the  guilt  of  all  sins,  committed  during 
the  year,  that  had  not  been  already  expiated  by  penitence, 
or  by  the  special  piacula  appointed  for  particular  offences ;  ^ 
but  there  is  little  or  no  trace  of  any  view  resembling  this 
in  connection  with  the  annual  piacula  of  the  heathen 
^  Lev.  .\vi.  30.  -  Yoma,  viii.  8,  9. 


I.ECT.   XI. 


PIACULA.  389 


Semites;  and  even  in  the  Old  Testament  this  interpreta- 
tion appears  to  he  modern.  The  Day  of  Atonement  is  a 
much  less  ancient  institution  than  the  Passover ;  and  in 
the  Passover,  though  the  sprinkled  blood  has  a  protecting 
efficacy,  the  law  prescribes  no  forms  of  humiliation  and 
contrition  such  as  are  enjoined  for  the  more  modern  rite. 
Again,  the  prophet  Ezekiel,  whose  sketch  of  a  legislation 
for  Israel,  on  its  restoration  from  captivity,  is  older 
than  the  law  of  Leviticus,  does  indeed  provide  for  two 
annual  atonino-  ceremonies,  in  the  first  and  in  the  seventh 
month ;  ^  but  the  point  of  these  ceremonies  lies  in  an 
elaborate  application  of  the  blood  to  various  parts  of  the 
temple,  with  the  object  of  "  reconciling  the  house."  This 
reference  of  the  sacrifice  reappears  also  in  Lev.  xvi. ; 
the  sprinkling  of  the  blood  on  the  great  Day  of  Atone- 
ment "  cleanses  the  altar,  and  makes  it  holy  from  all  the 
uncleanness  of  the  children  of  Israel."  -  Here  an  older  and 
merely  physical  conception  of  the  ritual  breaks  through, 
which  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  forgiveness  of  sin ;  for 
.uncleanness  in  the  Levitical  ritual  is  not  an  ethical  concep- 
tion. It  seems  that  the  holiness  of  the  altar  is  liable  to 
be  impaired,  and  requires  to  be  annually  refreshed  by  an 
application  of  holy  blood — a  conception  which  it  would  be 
hard  to  justify  from  the  higher  teaching  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, but  which  is  perfectly  intelligible  as  an  inheritance 
from  primitive  ideas  about  sacrifice,  in  which  the  altar- 
idol  on  its  part,  as  well  as  the  worshippers  on  theirs,  is 
periodically  reconsecrated  by  the  sprinkling  of  holy  {i.e. 
kindred)  blood,  in  order  that  the  life  -  bond  between  the 
god  it  represents  and  his  kindred  worshippers  may  be  kept 
fresh.     This   is   the   ultimate    meaning   of   the   sprinkling 

>  Ezek.  xlv.  19,  20  (LXX.). 

-  Lev.  xvi.  19;  cf.  ver.  33,  where  the  atonement  extends  to  the  whole 
sanctuary. 


390  ANNUAL 


LECT.   XI. 


with  a  tribesman's  blood,  whicli,  as  Theophrastus  tells  iis, 
was  demanded  yearly  by  so  many  altars  of  antiquity,  and 
also  of  the  yearly  sprinkling  where  the  victim  was  not  a 
man  but  a  sacrosanct  or  theanthropic  animal. 

The  "  reconciling  of  the  house  "  or  the  "  cleansing  of  the 
altar,"  however,  are  mere  priestly  phrases,  which  had  no 
intelligible  meaning  to  the  worshippers  themselves  in  the 
later  ages  of  antique  religion.  And,  as  I  have  already  said, 
it  does  not  appear  that  any  heathen  nation  habitually 
looked  on  the  annual  piacula  as  a  means  of  obtaining 
forgiveness  for  the  sins  of  the  community  during  the  past 
year.  On  the  contrary,  the  explanation  was  generally 
sought  in  a  myth,  and  the  myth  was  founded  on  the 
features  of  the  ritual.  The  annual  piacular  sacrifice  was 
very  often  an  actual  human  victim.  Thus,  to  confine 
ourselves  to  Semitic  worships,  although  the  same  thing  is 
true  also  of  Greece,  a  yearly  human  sacrifice  was  offered 
by  the  Arabs  of  Dumaetha,^  and  by  the  Carthaginians." 
And  where  this  was  not  the  case  we  sometimes  find  a 
legend  that  in  old  times  a  human  victim  had  been  offered, 
but  that  an  animal  sacrifice  had  come  to  be  accepted  in  its 
room.  Thus,  for  example,  the  annual  victim  at  Laodicea 
ad  Mare  was  a  stag,  but  the  story  was  that  in  former 
times  a  maiden  was  sacrificed.^  In  such  cases,  if  at  all, 
one  would  suppose  that  the  awful  rite  would  have  served 
to  quicken  the  sense  of  human  sinfulness,  and  lead  men 
to  approach  the  altar  with  genuine  contrition  for  their 
personal  failures  to  attain  the  standard  of  divine  righteous- 
ness. But,  as  a  rule,  no  such  ideas  seem  to  have  been 
suggested,  and  the  rite  was  simply  taken  as  an  established 
thing,  sufficiently  explained  when   the   circumstances  had 

^  Porpl).,  De  Ahst.  ii.  56. 

2  Ihid.  ii.  27  (from  Theoplirastiis) ;  Pliny,  H.  JV.  xxxvi.  29. 

^  This  interesting  sacrifice  is  discussed  at  length  in  Additional  Nott  G. 


i.KCT.  XI.  PIACULA.  r.Ol 

been  related  under  which  the  sacrifice  was  first  instituted. 
In  some  cases  indeed,  at  least  in  Greece/  it  was  taught  that 
the  annual  sacrihce  had  been  appointed  as  a  punishment  for 
some  ancient  crime,  for  wliich  the  community  was  bound 
to  make  yearly  satisfaction  from  generation  to  generation. 
Among  the  Semites,  however,  the  myth  generally  assumed 
another  aspect,  and  the  annual  piaculum  was  taken  to  be  a 
commemoration  of  the  death  of  the  god.  Originally,  the 
death  of  the  god  was  nothing  else  than  the  death  of  the 
theanthropic  victim  ;  but,  when  this  ceased  to  be  under- 
stood, it  was  thouglit  that  the  piacular  sacrifice  represented 
an  historical  tragedy,  in  which  the  god  was  killed.  Tims 
at  Laodicea  the  annual  sacrifice  of  the  stag  that  stood  for 
a  maiden,  and  was  offered  to  the  goddess  of  the  city,  stands 
side  by  side  with  a  legend  that  the  goddess  was  a  maiden, 
who  had  been  sacrificed  to  consecrate  the  foundation  of 
the  town,  and  was  thenceforth  worshipped  as  its  Fortune, 
like  Dido  at  Carthage ;  it  v/as  therefore  the  death  of  the 
goddess  herself  which  was  annually  renewed  in  the  piacular 
rite.  The  same  explanation  applies  to  those  scenic  re- 
presentations that  have  been  spoken  of  in  the  last  lecture, 
where  the  deity  is  yearly  Inirned  in  effigy ;  for  the  effigy 
in  such  cases  takes  the  place  of  an  actual  victim.^  And 
in  like  manner  the  annual  mourning  for  the  death  (jf 
Adonis,  which  supplies  the  closest  parallel  in  point  of 
form  to  the  fasting  and  humiliation  on  the  Hebrew  Day 
of  Atonement,  is  simply  a  scenic  commemoration  of  the 
death   of    the   god,   in    which   the    worshippers   take   part 

'  Thus  the  annual  sacrifice  to  Hera  Acra\a  at  Corinth  {supra,  p.  287)  was 
an  atoncnient  for  the  death  of  the  children  of  Medea. 

*  The  substitution  of  an  effigy  for  a  human  sacrifice,  or  a  victim  represent- 
ing a  god,  is  very  common.  The  Romans,  for  example,  substituted  puppets 
of  rushes  or  wool  for  human  offerings  in  the  Argea  and  the  worship  of 
Mania.  In  Mexico,  again,  human  victims  were  habitually  regarded  as 
incarnations  of  the  deity,  but  also  paste  images  of  the  gods  were  made  and 
eaten  sacramentally. 


392  ANNUAL   DEATH  lect.  xr. 

with  appropriate  wailing  and  lamentation,  but  without 
any  thought  corresponding  to  the  Christian  idea  that  the 
death  of  the  God -man  is  a  death  for  the  sins  of  the 
people.  On  the  contrary,  if,  as  in  the  Adonis  myth, 
an  attempt  is  made  to  give  some  further  account  of  the 
annual  rite  than  is  supplied  by  the  story  that  the  god 
had  once  been  killed  and  rose  again,  the  explanation 
offered  is  derived  from  the  physical  decay  and  regenera- 
tion of  nature.  The  Canaanite  Adonis  or  Tammuz  was 
a  form  of  the  local  Baal,  who,  as  we  have  already  learned, 
was  regarded  by  his  worshippers  as  the  source  of  all 
natural  growth  and  fertility.  His  death  therefore  meant 
a  temporary  suspension  of  the  life  of  nature,  and  was  held 
to  be  annually  repeated,  not  merely  in  ritual  symbol  at 
the  sanctuary,  but  in  the  annual  withering  and  decay  of 
vegetative  life.  And  this  death  of  the  life  of  nature  the 
worshippers  lament  out  of  natural  sympathy,  without  any 
moral  idea,  just  as  modern  man  is  touched  with  natural 
melancholy  at  the  falling  of  the  autumn  leaves.^ 

1  The  further  discussion  of  the  Adonis  myth,  and  other  legends  of  tlie 
death  of  the  gods,  must  be  reserved  for  a  future  course  of  lectures,  dealing 
with  Semitic  mythology  in  detail.  I  may  here,  however,  say  briefly  that 
the  mourning  for  Adonis  was  not,  in  my  judgment,  originally  a  lament  over 
decaying  nature,  but  simply  the  official  mourning  over  the  slaughter  of  a 
theanthropic  victim  in  whose  death  the  god  died.  The  accounts  we  possess 
of  the  scenic  representation  of  the  Adonis  tragedy,  tell  us  how  he  was  repre- 
sented dead  on  a  bier,  and  carried  out  to  be  cast  into  the  sea,  but  they  say 
nothing  of  a  representation  of  his  death.  This,  however,  cannot  have  been 
lacking  in  the  original  rite,  and  was  pr.obably  dropped  because  it  was  mis- 
understood. If  tlie  reference  in  Zech.  xii.  10,  11,  to  the  mourning  of 
Hadadrimmon  is  really,  as  seems  most  probable,  an  allusion  to  some  form 
of  the  lamentation  for  Adonis,  it  seems  that  the  piercing  of  him  who  is 
mourned  over  must  also  be  part  of  the  figure,  and  refer  to  a  symbolical 
representation  of  the  death  of  the  god.  My  own  belief  is  that  the  piacular 
sacrifice  of  swine  at  Cy^jrus,  on  April  2,  represents  the  death  of  the  god 
himself,  not  an  act  of  vengeance  for  his  death,  just  as  in  Crete  the  sacrifice 
of  a  bull  by  tearing  it  in  pieces  with  the  teeth  (Firmicus,  cap.  6)  represented 
the  death  of  the  Bull-god  Dionysus.  Adonis,  in  short,  is  the  Swinegod,  and 
in  this,  as  in  many  other  cases,  the  sacred  victim  has  been  changed  by  false 
interpretation  into  the  enemy  of  the  god. 


LECT.  xr. 


OF   THE   GOD.  393 


The  interpretation  of  the  death  of  the  god  as  correspond- 
ing to  the  annual  withering  up  of  nature,  which  was 
naturally  suggested  by  the  ideas  of  liaal- worship,  effectually 
shut  the  door  to  any  ethical  interpretation  of  the  annual 
relidous  mourning.  That  the  God-man  dies  for  His  people, 
and  that  His  death  is  their  life,  is  an  idea  which  was  in 
some  degree  foreshadowed  by  the  oldest  mystical  sacrifices. 
It  was  foreshadowed,  indeed,  in  a  very  crude  and  material- 
istic form,  and  without  any  of  those  ethical  ideas  which 
the  Christian  doctrine  of  the  atonement  derives  from  a 
profounder  sense  of  sin  and  divine  justice.  And  yet  the 
voluntary  death  of  the  divine  victim,  which  we  have  seen 
to  be  a  conception  not  foreign  to  ancient  sacrificial  ritual, 
contained  the  germ  of  the  deepest  thought  in  the  Christian 
doctrine :  the  thought  that  the  Kedeemer  gives  Himself  for 
His  people,  that  "  for  their  sakes  He  consecrates  Himself, 
that  they  also  might  be  consecrated  in  truth."  '  But  in  Baal- 
worship,  when  the  death  of  the  god  becomes  a  mere  cos- 
mical  process,  and  the  most  solemn  rites  that  ancient  religion 
knew  sank  to  the  level  of  a  scenic  representation  of  the 
yearly  revolutions  of  the  seasons,  the  features  of  primeval 
ritual  which  contained  germs  of  better  things  are  effectually 
hidden  out  of  sight,  and  the  offices  of  religion  cease  to 
appeal  to  any  higher  feeling  than  that  of  sympathy  with 
the  changing  moods  of  nature. 

In  the  brighter  days  of  Semitic  heathenism  the  annual 
wailing  for  the  god  hardly  suggested  any  serious  thought 
that  was  not  presently  drowned  in  an  outburst  of  mirth 
saluting  the  resurrection  of  the  Baal  on  the  following 
morning ;  and  in  more  distressful  times,  when  the  gloomier 
aspects  of  religion  were  those  most  in  sympathy  with  the 
prevaiUng  hopelessness  of  a  decadent  nation — such  times 
as  those  in  which  Ezekiel  found  the  women  of  Jerusalem 

1  John  xvii.  19. 


394  INTERPRETATION  OF 


LECT.    XI. 


mourning  for  Tamniuz — the  idea  that  the  gods  themselves 
were  not  exempt  from  the  universal  law  of  decay,  and  had 
ordered  this  truth  to  be  commemorated  in  their  temples 
by  bloody,  or  even  human,  sacrifices,  could  only  favour  the 
idea  that  religion  was  as  cruel  as  the  relentless  march  of 
adverse  fate,  and  that  man's  life  was  ruled  by  powers  that 
were  not  to  be  touched  by  love  or  pity,  but,  if  they  could 
be  moved  at  all,  would  only  be  satisfied  by  the  sacrifice  of 
man's  happiness  and  the  surrender  of  his  dearest  treasures. 
The  close  psychological  connection  between  sensuality  and 
cruelty,  which  is  familiar  to  students  of  the  liuman  mind, 
displays  itself  in  ghastly  fashion  in  the  sterner  aspects  of 
Semitic  heathenism ;  and  the  same  sanctuaries  which,  in 
prosperous  times,  resounded  with  licentious  mirth  and  carnal 
gaiety,  were  filled  in  times  of  distress  with  the  cowardly 
lamentations  of  worshippers,  who  to  save  their  own  lives 
were  ready  to  give  up  everything  they  held  dear,  even  to 
the  sacrifice  of  a  first-born  or  only  child. 

On  the  whole  the  annual  piacula  of  Semitic  heathenism 
appear  theatrical  and  unreal,  when  they  are  not  cruel  and 
repulsive.  The  stated  occurrence  of  gloomy  rules  at  fixed 
seasons,  and  without  any  direct  relation  to  human  conduct, 
gave  the  whole  ceremony  a  mechanical  character,  and  so 
made  it  inevitable  that  it  should  be  either  accepted  as  a 
mere  scenic  tragedy,  whose  meaning  was  summed  up  in  a 
myth,  or  interpreted  as  a  proof  that  the  divine  powers 
were  never  thoroughly  reconciled  to  man,  and  only  tolerated 
their  worshippers  in  consideration  of  costly  atonements 
constantly  renewed.  I  apprehend  that  even  in  Israel  the 
annual  piacula,  which  were  observed  from  an  early  date, 
liad  little  or  no  share  in  the  development  of  the  higher 
sense  of  sin  and  responsibility  which  characterise  the 
religion  of  the  Old  Testament.  The  Passover  is  a  rite  of 
the    most    prim;eval    antiquity ;     and    in    the    local    cults 


LECT.  XI.  ANNUAL   PIACULA.  395 

annual  mournings,  like  the  lamentation  for  Jeplithah's 
tlaiigliter  —  which  undoubtedly  was  connected  witli  an 
annual  sacrifice,  like  that  which  at  Laodicea  commemorated 
the  mythical  death  of  the  virgin  goddess — liad  been  yearly 
repeated  from  very  ancient  times.  Yet  only  after  the 
exile,  and  then  only  by  a  sort  of  afterthought,  which  does 
not  override  the  priestly  idea  that  the  annual  atonement  is 
above  all  a  reconsecration  of  tlie  altar  and  the  sanctuarv, 
do  we  find  the  annual  piaculum  of  the  Day  of  Atonement 
interpreted  as  a  general  atonement  for  the  sins  of  Israel 
during  the  past  year.  In  the  older  literature,  wdien 
exceptional  and  piacular  rites  are  interpreted  as  satisfac- 
tions for  sin,  the  offence  is  always  a  definite  one,  and  the 
piacular  rite  has  not  a  stated  and  periodical  character,  but 
is  directly  addressed  to  the  atonement  of  a  particular  sin 
or  course  of  sinful  life.  Annual  atonements,  so  far  as  they 
received  anything  more  than  a  mythical  interpretation, 
appear — if  we  may  judge  from  the  case  of  the  Passover — 
to  have  been  regarded  as  a  means  of  placing  the  worshippers 
in  a  special  way  under  the  divine  protection,  without  any 
express  reference  to  the  taking  away  of  guilt. 

The  conception  of  piacular  rites  as  a  satisfaction  for  sin 
appears  to  have  arisen,  after  the  original  sense  of  the 
theanthropic  sacrifice  of  a  kindred  animal  was  forgotten, 
mainly  in  connection  with  the  view  that  the  life  of  the 
victim  was  the  equivalent  of  the  life  of  a  human  member 
of  the  religious  community.  We  have  seen  that  when  the 
victim  was  no  longer  regarded  as  naturally  holy,  and 
equally  akin  to  the  god  and  his  worshippers,  the  ceremony 
of  its  death  was  still  performed  with  solemn  circumstances, 
not  appropriate  to  tl)e  slaugliter  of  a  mere  common  beast. 
It  was  thus  inevitable  that  the  victim  should  be  regarded 
either  as  a  representative  of  tlie  god,  or  as  the  representa- 
tive of  a  tribesman,  whose  life  was  sacred  to  his  fellows 


o 


96  SACRIFICES    AND  '  lect.  xi. 


The  former  interpretation  predominated  in  the  annual 
piacula  of  the  Baal  religions,  but  the  latter  was  that 
naturally  indicated  in  such  atoning  sacrifices  as  were  not 
periodical,  but  called  for  by  special  emergencies  which 
did  not  lend  themselves  to  a  mythical  interpretation. 
For  we  have  already  seen  that  in  old  times  the  circum- 
stances of  tlie  slaughter  were  those  of  a  death  which  could 
only  be  justified  by  the  consent,  and  even  by  the  active 
participation,  of  the  whole  community,  i.e.  of  the  judicial 
execution  of  a  kinsman/  In  later  times  this  rule  was 
modified,  and  in  ordinary  sacrifices  the  victim  was  slain 
either  by  the  offerer,  or  by  professional  slaughterers,  who 
formed  a  class  of  inferior  ministers  at  the  greater  sanctu- 
aries.^ But  communal  holocausts  and  piacula  continued  to 
l)e  slain  by  the  chief  priests  or  by  the  heads  of  the 
community  or  by  their  chosen  representatives,  so  that  the 
slaughter  retained  the  character  of  a  solemn  public  act."^ 

^  Supra,  p.  266  .s-g. 

'•^  111  C.  I.  8.  No.  86  the  ministers  of  the  temple  include  a  class  of 
slaughterers  (Dn3T),  and  so  it  was  at  Hierapolis  {Dea  Syria,  xliii.).  Among 
the  Jews,  at  the  second  temple,  the  Levites  often  acted  as  sLuigliterers  :  but 
before  the  cajitivity  the  temple  slaughterers  were  uncircumcised  foreigners 
(Ezek.  xliv.  6  sqq.),  a  usage  which  probably  had  its  origin  in  the  fact  that 
the  temple  was  properly  the  king's  chapel,  and  that- the  victims,  at  least  in 
older  times,  were  mainly  slain  to  provide  his  table.  For  "  chief  slaughterer  " 
is  in  Hebrew  the  title  of  the  chief  of  the  bodyguard  ;  the  slaughter  of  cnttle 
Vieing  in  ancient  times  an  office  not  unworthy  of  a  warrior  {Odys.  i.  108  ; 
Eurip.,  Ehctra,  815  ;  cf.  0.  T.  in  J.  Vh.,  p.  426) ;  and  the  bodyguard  of 
the  Judfean  kings,  which  also  attended  them  in  the  temple,  was  composed  of 
foreigners.  Foreign  guards  were  preferred,  because  no  feeling  of  kinship 
could  come  in  to  prevent  them  executing  the  king's  orders  against  any  of 
his  subjects.  Were  foreigners  preferred  as  butchers  on  a  similar  principle  ? 
We  have  seen  that  among  the  Troglodytes  the  butcher  was  unclean,  and 
that  at  Corinth  the  annual  piaculum  to  Hera  Acrrea  was  killed  by  slaves 
{supra,  pp.  278,  287). 

'  Thus  in  the  Old  Testament  we  find  young  men  as  sacrificers  in  Ex, 
xxiv.  5  ;  the  elders  in  Lev.  iv.  15,  Dent.  xxi.  4  ;  Aaron  in  Lev.  xvi.  15  ; 
cf.  Yoma,  iv.  3.  All  sacrifices,  except  the  last  named,  might,  according  to 
the  Rabliins,  be  killed  by  any  Israelite. 

The  choice  of  "young  men,"  or  rather  "  lads,"  as  sacrificers  in  Ex.  xxiv. 


LECT.  XI.  JUDICIAL   EXECUTIONS.  397 

A.t;aiii,  the  feeling  that  the  slaying  involves  -a  grave 
responsibility,  and  must  he  jnstitied  hy  divine  pennissiim, 
was  expressed  hy  the  Arabs,  even  in  ordinary  slaughter, 
by  the  use  of  the  hismillah,  i.e.  by  the  slaughterer  striking 
the  victim  in  the  name  of  his  god.^  But  in  many  piacula 
this  feelincj  was  carried  much  further,  and  care  was  taken 
to  slay  the  victim  witliout  blo(jdshed,  or  to  make  believe 
that  it  had  killed  itself.^  Certain  holocausts,  like  those  (jf 
the  Pyre-festival  at  Hierapolis,  were  burned  alive ;  and 
other  piacula  were  simply  pushed  over  a  liciyht,  so  that 
they  might  seem  to  kill  themselves  by  their  fall.  This 
was  done  at  Hierapolis,  l)oth  with  animals  and  witli 
human  victims  ;  and  according  to  the  Mishna  tlie  Hebrew 
scapegoat  was  not  allowed  to  go  free  in  the  wilderness, 
but  was  killeil  l)y  being  pushed  over  a  precipice.^  The 
same  kind  of  sacrifice  occurs  in  Egypt,  in  a  rite  which 
is  possibly  of  Semitic  origin,*  and  in  Greece,  in  more 
than  one  case  where  the  victims  were  human.'' 

All   such    forms   of    sacrifice    are   precisely   parallel    to 

is  curiously  analogous  to  the  choice  of  lads  as  executioners.  Judg.  viii.  20 
is  not  an  isolated  case,  for  Nilus  also  (p.  67)  says  that  tlie  Saracens  charged 
lads  with  the  execution  of  their  captives. 

^  The  same  feeling  is  expressed  in  Lev.  xvii.  11  ;  Gen.  viii.  :i  ■•<'/(/. 

-  The  blood  that  calls  for  vengeance  is  blood  that  falls  on  the  ground 
(Gen.  iv.  10).  Hence  blood  to  which  vengeance  is  refused  is  said  to  be 
trodden  under  loot  (Ibn  Hisham,  p.  79,  tdt.,  p.  861,  1.  5),  and  forgotten 
blood  is  covered  bj'  the  earth  (Job  xvi.  18).  And  so  we  often  lind  the  idea 
that  a  death  in  which  no  blooil  is  shed,  or  none  falls  upon  the  ground,  doe.s 
not  call  for  vengeance.  Infanticide  in  Arabia  was  effected  by  burying  the 
ehild  alive  ;  captive  kings  were  slain  by  bleeding  them  into  a  cup,  and  if 
one  drop  touched  the  ground  it  was  thought  that  their  death  would  be 
revenged  (supra,  p.  349,  note  2).  Application^  of  this  principle  to  sacri- 
lices  of  sacrosanct  and  kindred  animals  are  frequent  ;  tliey  are  strangled  or 
killed  witii  a  blunt  instrument  {nujjra,  p.  325  ;  note  also  the  club  or 
mallet  that  appears  in  sacrificial  scenes  on  ancient  Chaldean  cylinders, 
^lenant,  0'ly}>li<jn(^,  i.  lol),  or  at  least  no  drop  of  their  blood  must  fall 
on  the  ground  (Bancroft,  iii.  168). 

3  Df(t  %>•(«,  Iviii. ;   Yuma,  vi.  6. 

*  Plutarch,  Is.  tt  Os.  §  30  ;  cf.  Additional  Note.  G. 

*  At  the  Thargelia,  and  in  the  Leucadiau  ceremony. 


398  SACRIFICES   AND  lect.  xi. 

those  which  were  employed  iii  sacred  executions,  i.e.  in 
the  judicial  slaying  of  members  of  the  community.  The 
criminal  in  ancient  times  was  either  stoned  by  the  whole 
congregation,  as  was  the  usual  form  of  the  execution  among 
the  ancient  Hebrews ;  or  strangled,  as  was  commonly  done 
among  the  later  Jews  ;  or  drowned,  as  in  the  Eoman  punish- 
ment for  parricide,  where  the  kin  in  the  narrower  sense 
is  called  on  to  execute  justice  on  one  of  its  own  members ; 
or  otherwise  disposed  of  in  some  way  which  either  avoids 
bloodshed  or  prevents  the  guilt  of  blood  from  being  fixed 
on  an  individual.  These  coincidences  between  the  ritual 
of  sacrifice  and  of  execution  are  not  accidental ;  in  each 
case  they  had  their  origin  in  the  scruple  against  shedding 
kindred  blood ;  and,  when  the  old  ideas  of  the  kinship 
of  man  and  beast  became  unintelligible,  they  helped  to 
establish  the  view  that  the  victim  whose  life  was  treated 
as  equivalent  to  that  of  a  man  was  a  sacrifice  to  justice, 
accepted  in  atonement  for  the  guilt  of  the  worshippers. 
The  parallelism  between  piacular  sacrifice  and  execution 
came  out  with  particular  clearness  where  the  victim  was 
wholly  burnt,  or  where  it  was  cast  down  a  precipice ;  for 
burning  was  the  punishment  appointed  among  the  Hebrews 
and  other  ancient  nations  for  impious  offences,^  and  casting 
from  a  cliff  is  one  of  the  commonest  forms  of  execution.^ 

The  idea  originally  connected    with    the  execution    of 
a  tribesman    is  not  exactly  penal    in    our    sense    of    the 

^  Gen.  xxxviii.  24  ;  Lev.  xx.  14,  xxi.  9  ;  Josli.  vii.  15. 

-  The  Tarjjeiau  rock  at  Rome  will  occur  U>  every  o!ie.  Amoiif;;  the  Helirews 
we  lind  captives  so  killed  (2  Chron.  xxv.  12),  and  in  our  own  days  the  Sinai 
Arabs  killed  Prof.  Palmer  by  making  hira  leap  from  a  rock  ;  of.  also  2  Kings 
viii.  12,  Hos.  x.  14,  from  wlii(di  it  would  seem  that  this  was  the  usual  way 
of  killing  non-combatants.  1  apprehend  that  the  obscure  form  of  execution 
"  before  the  Lord,"  mentioned  in  2  Sam.  xxi.  9  (and  also  Numb.  xxv.  4),  is 

of  the  same  sort,  for  the  victims  fall  and  are  killed  ;  yplH  will  answer  to 

s- 

■j  t       Note  that  this  religious  execution  takes  place  at  the  season  of  the 
k^'>  * 
paschal  piaculum. 


LECT.  XI.  JUDICIAL    EXECUTIONS.  399 

word ;  the  object  is  not  to  punish  the  ofiender,  but  to 
lid  the  community  of  an  impious  member — ordinarily  a 
man  who  has  shed  the  sacred  tribal  blood.  Murder  and 
incest,  or  offences  of  a  like  kind  against  the  sacred  laws 
of  blood,  are  in  primitive  society  the  only  crimes  of  which 
the  community  as  such  takes  cognisance ;  the  offences  of 
man  against  man  are  matters  of  private  law,  to  be  settled 
between  the  parties  on  the  principle  of  retaliation  or  by 
the  payment  of  damages.  But  murder,  to  which  as  the 
typical  form  of  crime  we  may  confine  our  attention,  is  an 
inexpiable  offence,  for  which  no  compensation  can  1)0 
taken;  the  man  who  has  killed  liis  kinsman  or  his 
covenant  ally,  whether  of  design  or  by  chance,  is  impious, 
and  must  be  cut  off  from  his  community  by  death  or 
outlawry.  And  in  such  a  case  the  execution  or  banish- 
ment of  the  culprit  is  a  religious  duty,  for  if  it  is  not 
performed  the  anger  of  the  deity  rests  on  the  whole  kin 
or  community  of  the  murderers.^ 

In  the  oldest  state  of  society  the  punishment  of  a 
murderer  is  not  on  all  fours  with  a  case  of  blood-revenge. 
Blood-revenge  applies  to  manslaughter,  i.e.  to  the  killing  of 
a  stranger.  And  in  that  case  the  dead  man's  kin  make  no 
effort  to  discover  and  punish  the  individual  slayer ;  they 
hold  his  whole  kin  responsible  for  his  act,  and  take 
vengeance  on  the  first  of  them  on  whom  they  can  lay 
hands.  In  the  case  of  murder,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
point  is  to  rid  the  kin  of  an  impious  person,  who  has 
violated  the  sanctity  of  the  tribal  blood,  and  here  there- 
fore it  is  important  to  discover  and  punish  the  criminal 
himself.  But  if  he  cannot  be  discovered,  some  other  means 
must  be  taken  to  blot  out  the  impiety  and  restore  the 
harmony  between  the  community  and  its  god,  and  for  this 
purpose  a  sacramental  sacrifice  is  obviously  indicated,  such 

1  Deut.  xxi.  1-9. 


400  DOCTEINE    OF  lect.  xi. 

as  Deut.  xxi.  provides  for  the  purging  of  tlie  community 
from  the  guilt  of  an  untraced  murder.  In  such  a  case  it 
was  inevitable  that  the  sacrifice,  performed  as  it  was  with 
circumstances  closely  akin  to  those  of  an  execution,  should 
come  to  be  regarded  as  a  suiTogate  for  the  death  of  the 
true  culprit.  And  this  interpretation  was  all  the  more 
readily  established  because,  from  an  early  date,  the  alliance 
of  different  kins  had  l)egun  to  ^ive  rise  to  cases  of  homi- 
cide  in  which  the  line  of  distinction  was  no  longer  clear 
between  murder  and  manslaughter,  between  the  case  where 
the  culprit  himself  must  die,  and  the  case  where  any  life 
kindred  to  his  may  suffice.  Thus  in  the  time  of  David  ^ 
the  Israelites  admit  that  a  crime  calling  for  expiation  was 
committed  by  Saul  when  he  slew  the  Gibeonites,  who  were 
the  sworn  allies  of  Israel.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
Gibeonites  claim  satisfaction  under  the  law^  of  blood- 
revenge,  and  ask  that  in  lieu  of  Saul  himself  certain 
members  of  his  house  shall  be  given  up  to  them.  And  in 
this  way  the  idea  of  substitution  is  brought  in,  even  in  a 
case  which  is,  strictly  speaking,  one  of  murder. 

In  all  discussion  of  the  doctrine  of  substitution  as 
applied  to  sacrifice,  it  nnist  be  remembered  that  private 
'sacrifice  is  a  younger  thing  than  clan  sacrifice,  and  that 
private  piacula  offered  by  an  individual  for  his  own  sins 
are  of  comparatively  modern  institution.  The  mortal  sin 
of  an  individual — and  it  is  only  mortal  sin  that  has  to  be 
considered  in  this  connection — was  a  thing  that  affected 
the  whole  community,  or  the  whole  kin  of  the  offender. 
Thus  the  inexpiable  sin  of  the  sons  of  Eli  is  visited  on 
his  whole  clan  from  generation  to  generation  ; "  the  sin  of 
Achan  is  the  sin  of  Israel,  and  as  such  is  punished  by  the 
defeat  of  the  national  army ;  ^  and  the  sin  of  Saul  and 
"  his  bloody  house  "  {i.e.  the  house  involved  in  the  blood- 
^  2  Sam.  xxi.  ^  1  Sam.  ii.  27  sqq.  '  Josh.  vii.  1,  11. 


LECT.    XI. 


SUBSTITCTION.  401 


shed)  leads  to  a  three  years'  famine.     Accordingly  it  is 
the  business  of  the  comiuimity  to  narrow  the  responsibility 
for  the  crime,  and  to  free  itself  of  the  contagious  taint  by 
fixing  the  guilt  either  on  a  single  individual,  or  at  least  on 
his  immediate  kin,  as  in  the  case  of  Achan,  wlio  was  stoned 
and  then  burned  with  liis   whole   family.      Hence,  when  a 
tiibesman  is  executed  for  an  impious  offence,  he  dies  on 
behalf    of    the    community,    to    restore    normal    relations 
between   them    and   their  god ;  so  that  the  analogy  with 
sacrifice  is  very  close  in  purpose  as  well  as  in  form.      And 
so,  the  cases  in  whicli  the  anger  of  the  god  can  be  traced 
to  the  crime  of  a  particular  individual,  and  atoned  for  by  his 
death,  are  very  naturally  seized  upon  to  explain  the  cases  in 
which  the  sin  of  the  comnmnity  cannot  be  thus  individualised, 
but  where,  nevertheless,  according  to  ancient  custom,  recon- 
ciliation is  sought  througli  the  sacrifice  of  a  theanthropic 
victim.     The  old  explanation,  that  the  life  of  the  sacrosanct 
animal  is  used  to  retie  the  life-bond  between  the  god  and  his 
worshippers,  fell  out  of  date  when  the  kinship  of  races  of 
men  with  animal  kinds  was  forgotten.      A  new  explanation 
had  to  be  sought ;  and  none  lay  nearer  than  that  the  sin 
of   tlie   community  was   concentrated   on    the  victim,  and 
that  its  death  was  accepted  as  a  sacrifice  to  divine  justice. 
This  explanation   was  natural,  and  appears  to  have  been 
widely  adopted,  thougli  it  hardly  became  a  formal  dogma, 
for  ancient  religion  had  no  otUcial  dogmas,  but  contented 
itself  with  continuing  to  practise  antique  rites,  and  letting 
every   one   interpret   them   as   he   would.       Even   in   the 
Levitical  law  the  imposition  of   liands  on  llie  liead  of  the 
victim  is  not  formally  interpreted  as  a  laying  of  the  sins  of 
the  people  on  its  head,  except  in  the  case  of  the  scape-goat.^ 
And  in  this  case  the  carrying  away  of  the  people's  guilt 
to  an  isolated  and  desert  region  (hit:  j*"in)   has  its  nearest 

1  Lev.  xvi.  21. 

2c 


402  PIACULA   AND  lect.  xi. 

analogies,  not  in  ordinaiy  atoning  sacrifices,  but  in  those 
physical  methods  of  getting  rid  of  an  infectious  taboo 
which  characterise  the  lowest  forms  of  superstition.  The 
same  form  of  disinfection  recurs  in  the  Levitical  le2;is- 
lation,  where  a  live  bird  is  made  to  i\j  away  with  the 
contagion  of  leprosy,^  and  in  Arabian  custom,  when  a 
widow  before  remarriage  makes  a  bird  fly  away  with 
the  uncleanness  of  her  widowhood."  In  ordinary  burnt- 
off'erings  and  sin-offerings  the  imposition  of  hands  is  not 
officially  interpreted  by  the  Law  as  a  transference  of  sin 
to  the  victim,  but  rather  has  the  same  sense  as  in  acts  of 
blessing  or  consecration;'^  where  the  idea  no  doubt  is  that  the 
physical  contact  between  the  parties  serves  to  identify  them, 
but  not  specially  to  transfer  guilt  from  the  one  to  the  other. 
In  the  Levitical  ritual  all  piacula,  both  public  and 
private,  refer  only  to  sins  committed  unwittingly.  As 
regards  the  sin-offering  for  the  people  this  is  quite  intelli- 
gible, in  accordance  with  what  has  just  been  said  ;  for  if  the 
national  sin  can  be  brought  home  to  an  individual,  he  of 
course  must  be  punished  for  it.  But  the  private  sin- 
offerings  presented  by  an  individual,  for  sins  committed 
unwittingly,  and  subsequently  brought  to  his  knowledge, 
appear  to  be  a  modern  innovation  ;  before  the  exile  the 
private  offences  for  which  satisfaction  had  to  be  made  at 
the  sanctuary  were  not  mortal  sins,  and  gave  no  room  for 
the  application  of  the  doctrine  of  life  for  life,  but  were 
atoned  for  by  a  money  payment,  on  the  analogy  of  the 
satisfaction  given  by  payment  of  a  fine  for  the  offences  of 

^  Lev.  xiv.  7,  53  ;  cf.  Zecli.  v.  5  ),qq. 

2  Taj  al-' Arils,  s.v.       Jj,  VIII.   (Lane,  s.v.  ;  0.   T.  in  J.   Ch.  p.   439; 

Wellh.,  p.  156).  An  Assyrian  parallel  in  Records  of  the  Past,  ix.  151.  It 
is  indeed  probable  that  in  the  oldest  times  the  outlawry  of  a  criminal  meant 
nothing  more  than  freeing  the  conauunity,  just  in  this  way,  from  a 
deadly  contagion. 

»  Gen.  xlviii.  14  ;  Num.  viii.  10;  Deut.  xxxiv.  9  ;  cf.  2  Kings  ii.  13  sqq. 


LECT.  XI.  DIVINE    JUSTICE.  403 

man  against  man  (2  Kings  xii.  1(5).  And,  on  tlic  whole, 
while  there  can  be  no  doul)t  that  public  piacula  were  often 
regarded  as  surrogates  for  the  execution  of  an  offender, 
who  either  was  not  known  or  wlioni  the  community 
hesitated  to  bring  to  justice,  I  very  much  doubt  whether 
private  ofierings  were  often  viewed  in  this  light ;  even  the 
sacrifice  of  a  child,  as  we  have  already  seen,  was  conceived 
rather  as  the  greatest  and  most  exorl)itant  "ift  that  a 
man  can  ofifer.^  Tlie  very  idea  of  an  execution  implies  a 
public  function,  and  not  a  private  prestation,  and  so  I 
apprehend  that  the  conception  of  a  satisfaction  paid  to 
divine  justice  could  not  well  be  connected  witli  any  but 
public  piacula.  In  tlicse  the  death  of  the  victim  might 
very  well  pass  for  the  scenic  representation  of  an  execution, 
and  so  represent  the  community  as  exonerating  itself  from 
all  complicity  in  the  crime  to  be  atoned  for.  Looked  at  in 
this  view,  atoning  rites  no  doubt  served  in  some  measure 
to  keep  alive  a  sense  of  divine  justice  and  of  the  imperative 
duty  of  righteousness  within  the  community.  But  the 
moral  value  of  such  scenic  representation  was  probably 
not  very  great ;  and  where  an  actual  human  victim  was 
ofiCered,  so  that  the  sacrifice  practically  became  an  execu- 
tion, and  was  interpreted  as  a  punishment  laid  on  tlie  com- 
munity by  its  god,  the  ceremony  was  so  wholly  deficient  in 
distributive  justice  that  it  was  calculated  to  perplex, 
rather  than  to  educate,  the  growing  sense  of  morality. 

Christian  theologians,  looking  on  the  sacrifices  of  the 
Old  Testament  as  a  type  of  the  sacrifice  on  the  cross, 
and  interpreting  the  latter  as  a  satisfaction  to  divine 
justice,  have  undoubtedly  over-estimated  the  ethical  lessons 
embodied  in  the  Jewish  sacrificial  system ;  as  may  be 
inferred  even  from  the  fact  that,  for  many  centuries,  the 

^  The  Greek  piacula  for  murder  were  certainly  not  regarded  as  executions,   • 
but  as  cathartic  rites. 


404  CATHARTIC 


LECT.    XI. 


official  theology  of  the  Church  was  content  to  interpret 
the  death  of  Christ  as  a  ransom  for  mankind  paid  to  the 
devil,  or  as  a  satisfaction  to  the  divine  honour  (Anselm) 
rather  than  as  a  recognition  of  the  sovereignty  of  the 
moral  law  of  justice.  If  Christian  theology  shews  such 
variations  in  the  interpretation  of  the  doctrine  of  substitu- 
tion, it  is  obviously  absurd  to  expect  to  find  a  consistent 
doctrine  on  this  head  in  connection  with  ancient  sacrifice  ;^ 
and  it  may  safely  be  affirmed  that  the  influence  of  piacular 
sacrifices,  in  keeping  the  idea  of  divine  justice  before  the 
minds  of  ancient  nations,  was  very  slight  compared  with 
the  influence  of  the  vastly  more  important  idea  that  tlie 
gods,  primarily  as  the  vindicators  of  the  duties  of  kinship, 
and  then  also  of  the  wider  morality  which  ultimately 
grew  up  on  the  basis  of  kinship,  preside  over  the  public 
exercise  of  justice,  give  oracles  for  the  detection  of  hidden 
offences,  and  sanction  or  demand  the  execution  of  guilty 
tribesmen.  Of  these  very  real  functions  of  divine  justice 
the  piacular  sacrifice,  when  interpreted  as  a  scenic 
execution,  is  at  best  only  an  empty  shadow. 

Another  interpretation  of  piacular  sacrifice,  which  has 
great  prominence  in  antiquity,  is  that  it  purges  away 
guilt.  The  cleansing  effect  of  piacula  is  mainly  associated 
with  the  application  to  the  persons  of  the  worshippers  of 
sacrificial  blood  or  ashes,  or  of  holy  water  and  other  things 
of  sacred  virtue,  including  holy  herbs  and  even  the 
fragrant  smoke  of  incense.  This  is  a  topic  which  it  would 
be  easy  to  illustrate  at  great  length  and  with  a  variety  of 
curious  particulars ;  but  the  principle  involved  is  so 
simple  that  little  would  be  gained  by  the  enumeration  of 
all  the  different  substances  to  which  a  cathartic  virtue  was 

^  Jewish  theology  has  a  f,'reat  deal  to  say  about  the  acceptance  of  tlie 
merits  of  the  righteous  on  behalf  of  the  wicked,  but  very  little  about  atone- 
ment through  sacrifice. 


LECT.  xr.  SACRIFICES.  405 

ascribed,  either  by  themselves  or  as  accessories  to  an 
atoning  sacrifice.  A  main  point  to  be  noted  is  that 
ritual  purity  has  in  principle  nothini;-  to  do  with  physical 
cleanliness,  though  such  a  connection  was  ultimately 
established  by  the  common  use  of  water  as  a  means  ot' 
lustration.  Primarily,  purification  means  the  application 
to  the  person  of  some  medium  which  removes  a  taboo, 
and  enables  the  person  purified  to  mingle  freely  in  the 
ordinary  life  of  his  fellows.  It  is  not  therefore  identical 
witli  consecration,  for  the  latter  often  brings  special  taboos 
with  it.  And  so  we  find  that  the  ancients  used  purifica- 
tory rites  after  as  well  as  before  holy  functions.'  ])Ut 
as  the  normal  life  of  the  member  of  a  religious  community 
is  in  a  broad  sense  a  holy  life,  lived  in  accordance  with 
certain  standing  precepts  of  sanctity,  and  in  a  constant 
relation  to  the  deity  of  the  community,  the  main  use  of 
purificatory  rites  is  not  to  tone  down,  to  the  level  of 
ordinary  life,  the  excessive  holiness  conveyed  by  contact 
with  sacrosanct  things,  but  rather  to  impart  to  one  who 
has  lost  it  the  measure  of  sanctity  that  puts  him  on  tlu' 
level  of  ordinary  social  life.  So  much  indeed  does  this 
view  of  the  matter  predominate,  that  among  the  Hebrews 
all  purifications  are  ordinarily  reckoned  as  purification 
from  uncleanness ;  thus  the  man  who  has  burned  the  red 
heifer  or  carried  its  ashes,  becomes  ceremonially  unclean, 
though  in  reality  the  thing  that  he  has  been  in  contact 
with  was  not  impure  but  most  holy ;  ^  and  similarly  the 
handling  of  the  Scriptures,  according  to  the  Ilabljins, 
defiles  the  hands,  i.e.  entails  a  ceremonial  washing.  Puri- 
fications, therefore,  are  performed  by  the  use  of  any  of 
the  physical  means  that  re-establish  normal  relations  with 
the  deity  and    the   congregation    of    his  worshippers — iu 

1  St'o  iiifi-a,  A'ldlfionnl  Xo(e  C,  p.  432  xq  ,  ami  xiijn-a,  [>.  l?32  »'i 
-  Numb.  xix.  8,  10. 


406  CATHAETIC  LECT.  xi. 

short,  by  contact  with  something  that  contains  and  can 
impart  a  divine  virtue.  For  ordinary  purposes  the  use 
of  living  water  may  suffice,  for,  as  we  know,  there  is  a 
sacred  principle  in  such  water.  But  the  most  powerful 
cleansing  media  are  necessarily  derived  from  the  body  and 
blood  of  sacrosanct  victims,  and  the  forms  of  purification 
embrace  such  rites  as  the  sprinkling  of  sacrificial  blood 
or  ashes  on  the  person,  anointing  with  holy  unguents,  or 
fumigation  with  the  smoke  of  incense,  which  from  early 
times  was  a  favourite  accessory  to  sacrifices.  It  seems 
probable,  however,  that  the  religious  value  of  incense  was 
originally  independent  of  animal  sacrifice,  for  frankincense 
was  the  gum  of  a  very  holy  species  of  tree,  which  was 
collected  with  religious  precautions.-^  Whether,  therefore, 
the  sacred  odour  was  used  in  unguents  or  burned  like  an 
altar  sacrifice,  it  appears  to  have  owed  its  virtue,  like  the 
gum  of  the  samora  tree,"  to  the  idea  that  it  was  the  blood 
of  an  animate  and  divine  plant. 

It  is  easy  to  understand  that  cathartic  media,  like  holi- 
ness itself,  were  of  various  degrees  of  intensity,and  were  some- 
times used,  one  after  another,  in  an  ascending  scale.  All 
contact  with  holy  things  has  a  dangerous  side;  and  so,  before 
a  man  ventures  to  approach  the  holiest  sacraments,  he 
prepares  himself  by  ablutions  and  other  less  potent  cathartic 
applications.  On  this  principle  ancient  religions  developed 
very  complicated  schemes  of  purificatory  ceremonial,  but  in 
all  grave  cases  these  culminated  in  piacular  sacrifice;  "with- 
out shedding  of  blood  there  is  no  remission  of  sin."  ^ 

In  the  most  primitive  form  of  the  sacrificial  idea  the 
blood  of  the  sacrifice  is  not   employed  to  wash  away  an 

'  Pliny,  xii.  54.  The  right  even  to  see  the  trees  was  reserved  to  certain 
holy  families,  who,  when  engaged  in  harvesting  the  gum,  had  to  abstain  fioni 
all  contact  with  women  and  IVoni  pai'licijiation  in  funerals. 

■^  Supra,  p.  126.  3  Heh.  ix.  22. 


LECT.  XI.  SACRIFICES.  407 

impurity,  but  to  convey  to  the  worshipper  a  particle  of 
holy  life.  The  conception  of  piacular  media  as  purifi- 
catory, however,  involves  the  notion  tliat  the  holy  medium 
not  only  adds  somethint.:;  to  tlio  worsliipper's  life,  and 
refreshes  its  sanctity,  but  expels  from  him  something  that 
is  impure.  The  two  views  are  obviously  not  inconsistent, 
if  we  conceive  impurity  as  the  wrong  kind  of  life,  which  is 
dispossessed  by  inoculation  with  the  right  kind.  Some 
idea  of  this  sort  is,  in  fact,  that  whicli  savages  associate 
with  the  uncleanness  of  taboo,  which  they  commonly 
ascribe  to  the  presence  in  or  about  the  man  of  "  spirits  "  or 
living  agencies  ;  and  the  same  idea  occurs  in  much  higher 
forms  of  religion,  as  when,  in  the  Catholic  Church,  exor- 
cisms to  expel  devils  from  the  catechumen  are  regarded  as 
a  necessary  preliminary  to  baptism. 

Among  the  Semites  the  impurities  which  were  thought 
of  as  cleaving  to  a  man,  and  making  him  unfit  to  min<de 
freely  in  the  social  and  religious  life  of  his  community,  were 
of  very  various  kinds,  and  often  of  a  nature  that  we  should 
regard  as  merely  physical,  e.g.  uncleanness  from  contact 
with  the  dead,  from  leprosy,  from  eating  forbidden  food, 
and  so  forth.  All  these  are  mere  survivals  of  savage 
taboos,  and  present  nothing  instructive  for  the  higher 
developments  of  Semitic  religion.  They  were  dealt  with, 
where  the  uncleanness  ■vwas  of  a  mild  form,  mainly  ])y 
ablutions  ;  or  where  the  uncleanness  was  more  intense,  by 
more  elaborate  ceremonies  involving  the  use  of  sacrificial 
blood,^  of  sacrificial  ashes,'  or  the  like.  Sometimes,  as  we 
have  seen,  the  Hebrews  and  Arabs  conveyed  the  impurity 
to  a  bird,  and  allowed  it  to  fly  away  with  it.^ 

1  Lev.  xiv.  17,  51.  ^  jfumb.  xix.  17. 

'  Supra,  p.  402.  In  the  Arabian  case  the  woman  also  threw  away  a 
piece  of  camel's  dung,  which  must  also  he  supposed  to  have  become  the 
receptacle  for  her  impurity  ;  or  she  cut  her  nails  or  plucked  out  part  of  her 
hair  (cf.  Deut.  xxi.  12),  in  which,  as  specially  important  parts  of  the  body 


408  BLOOD-GUILTINESS.  lect.  xi. 

There  is,  however,  one  form  of  impurity,  viz.  that  of  blood- 
shed, with  which  important  ethical  ideas  connected  them- 
selves. Here  also  the  impurity  is  primarily  a  physical 
one ;  it  is  the  actual  blood  of  the  murdered  man,  staining 
the  hands  of  the  slayer,  or  lying  unatoned  and  unburied 
on  the  ground,  that  defiles  the  murderer  and  his  whole 
community,  and  has  to  be  cleansed  away.  We  have 
already  seen  ^  that  the  Semitic  religions  provide  no  atone- 
ment for  the  murderer  himself,  that  can  restore  him  to  his 
original  place  in  his  tribe,  and  this  principle  survives  in 
the  Hebrew  law,  which  does  not  admit  piacula  for  mortal 
sms.  The  ritual  idea  of  cleansing  from  the  guilt  of  blood 
is  only  applicable  to  the  community,  which  disavows  the 
act  of  its  impious  member,  and  seeks  the  restoration  of 
its  injured  holiness  by  a  public  sacrificial  act.  Thus 
in  Semitic  antiquity  the  whole  ritual  conception  of  the 
purging  away  of  sin  is  bound  up  with  the  notion  of  the 
solidarity  of  the  body  of  worshippers — the  same  notion 
which  makes  the  pious  Hebrews  confess  and  lament  not 
only  their  own  sins,  but  the  sins  of  their  fathers."  When 
the  conception  that  the  community,  as  such,  is  responsible 
for  the  maintenance  of  holiness  in  all  its  parts,  is  combined 
with  the  thought  that  holiness  is  specially  compromised  by 
crime, — for  in  early  society  bloodshed  within  the  kin  is  the 
typical  form,  to  the  analogy  of  which  all  other  crimes  are 
referred, — a  solid  basis  is  laid  for  the  conception  of  the 
religious  community  as  a  kingdom  of  righteousness,  which 
lies  at  the  root  of  the  spiritual  teacliing  of  the  Hebrew 
prophets.  The  stricter  view  of  divine  righteousness  which 
distinguishes  Hebrew  religion  from  that  of  the  Greeks,  even 

(supra,  p.  306,  note  2),  the  impure  life  might  be  supposed  to  l)e  concentrated  ; 
or  she  anointed  herself  with  perfume,  i.e.  with  a  holy  medium,  or  rubbed 
lierself  against  an  ass,  sheep  or  goat,  i.e.  a  holy  animal. 

1  Suj/ra,  p.  340  sq.,  402. 

*  Hos.  X.  9  ;  Jer.  iil.  25  ;  Ezra  ix.  7  :  Ps.  cvi.  6. 


LECT.  XI.  PENITENCE. 


409 


before  the  i)n)phetic  iDoriod,  is  mainly  connected  witli  the 
idea  that,  so  far  as  indiviihials  are  concerned,  there  is  no 
atonement  for  mortal  sin.^  This  principle  indeed  is 
common  to  all  races  in  the  earliest  stages  of  law  and 
religion;  but  among  the  Greeks  it  was  early  broken 
down,  for  reasons  that  have  been  already  explained,"  while 
among  the  Hebrews  it  subsisted,  without  change,  till  a  date 
wlieu  the  conception  of  sin  was  sufficiently  developed  to 
permit  of  its  being  interpreted,  as  was  done  by  the 
propliets,  in  a  way  that  raised  the  religion  of  Israel 
altogether  out  of  the  region  of  physical  ideas,  with  which 
primitive  conceptions  of  holiness  are  bound  up. 

"VVe  had  occasion  a  moment  ago  to  glance  at  the  subject 
of  confession  of  sin  and  lamentation  over  it.  The  connec- 
tion of  this  part  of  religion  with  piacular  sacrifice  is 
important  enough  to  deserve  a  separate  consideration. 

Among  the  Jews  the  great  Day  of  Expiation  was  a  day 
of  humiliation  and  penitent  sorrow  for  sin,  for  which  a 
strict  fast  and  all  the  outward  signs  of  deep  mourning  were 
prescribed.^  Similar  forms  of  grief  were  observed  ou  all 
occasions  of  solemn  supplication  at  the  sanctuary,  not  only 
by  the  Hebrews,"  but  by  their  neighbours.''  On  such 
occasions,  where  the  mourners  assemble  at  a  temple  or 
high  place,  we  must,  according  to  the  standing  rules  of 
ancient  religion,  assume  that  a  piacular  sacrifice  formed 
the  culminating  point  of  the  service  •/  and  conversely  it 
appears  probable    that   forms    of  mourning,  more   or  less 

1  E.X0.1.  xxi.  14.  '  ''^"Pra,  p.  341. 

3  According  to  Yoma,  \n\.  1,  washing,  unguents,  ami  the  use  of  shoes 
were,  I'orbidden. 

*  1  Sam,  vii.  6  ;  Isa.  xxxvii,  1  ;  Joel  ii.  12  xqq.  ^  Isa.  xv,  2  sqq. 

fi  In  Hos.  vii.  14  the  mourners  who  howl  upon  their  beds  are  engaged  in 
a  religious  function.  And  as  ordinary  mourners  lie  on  the  ground,  I  take  it 
that  the  beds  are  the  couches  on  which  men  reclined  at  a  sacrificial  bamjuet 
(Amos  ii.  8,  vi.  4),  which  here  lias  the  character,  not  of  a  joyous  feast,  but 
of  an  atoning  rite. 


410  MOUENING   IN  lect.  xt. 

accentuated,  habitually  went  with  piacular  rites,  not  only 
when  they  were  called  for  by  some  great  public  calamity, 
but  on  other  occasions  too.  For  we  liave  already  seen  that 
in  the  annual  piacula  of  the  Baal  religion  there  was  also  a 
formal  act  of  mourninsj,  which,  however,  was  not  an  ex- 
pression  of  penitence  for  sin,  but  a  lament  over  the  dead 
god.  In  this  last  case  the  origin  and  primary  significance 
of  the  obligatory  lamentation  is  sufliciently  transparent ;  for 
the  death  of  the  god  is  originally  nothing  else  than  the 
death  of  the  theanthropic  victim,  which  is  bewailed  by 
those  who  assist  at  the  ceremony,  exactly  as  the  Todas 
bewail  the  slaughter  of  the  sacred  buffalo.^  On  the  same 
principle  the  Egyptians  of  Thebes  bewailed  the  death  of 
the  ram  that  was  annually  sacrificed  to  the  god  Amen, 
and  then  clothed  the  idol  in  its  skin  and  buried  the 
carcase  in  a  sacred  coffin.^  Here  the  mourning  is  for  the 
death  of  the  sacrosanct  victim,  which,  as  the  use  of  the 
skin  indicates,  represents  the  god  himself.  But  an  act  of 
lamentation  was  not  less  appropriate  in  piacular  rites, 
where  the  victim  was  thought  of  rather  as  representing 
a  man  of  the  kindred  of  the  worshippers ;  and  primarily, 
as  we  know,  the  theanthropic  victim  was  equally  akin  to 
the  god  and  to  the  sacrificers. 

I  think  it  can  be  made  probable  that  a  form  of  lamenta- 
tion over  the  victim  was  part  of  the  oldest  sacrificial  ritual, 
and  that  this  is  the  explanation  of  such  rites  as  the  howl- 
ing (oXoXvyi])  which  accompanied  Greek  sacrifices,  and  in 
which,  as  in  acts  of  mourning  for  the  dead,  women  took 
the  chief  part.  Herodotus  (iv.  189)  was  struck  with  the 
resemblance  between  the  Greek  practice  and  that  of  the 
Libyans,  a  race  among  whom  the  sacredness  of  domestic 
animals  was  very  marked.  The  Libyans  killed  their 
sacrifices  without  bloodshed,  by  throwing  them  over  their 

1  Supra,  p.  281.  2  Herod.,  ii.  42. 


LECT.   XI. 


SACRIFICE.  411 


huts  ^  and  then  twisting  their  necks.  Where  bloodshed  is 
avoided  in  a  sacrifice  we  may  be  sure  that  the  Hfc  of  the 
victim  is  regarded  as  human  or  theanthropic,  and  tlie 
howling  can  be  nothing  else  tlian  an  act  of  mourning. 
Among  the  Semites,  in  like  manner,  the  shouting  {hcdlel, 
tahl'd)  that  accompanied  sacrifice  may  probably,  in  its 
oldest  shape,  have  been  a  wail  over  the  death  of  the 
victim,  thougli  it  idtimately  took  the  form  of  a  chant  of 
praise  (Hallelujah),  or,  among  the  Arabs,  degenerated  into 
a  meaningless  repetition  of  the  word  lahhaiha.  For  it  is 
scarcely  legitimate  to  separate  the  Semitic  tahlll  from  the 
Greek  and  Libyan  oXokvyij,  and  indeed  the  roots  ^^n  and  hb'< 
(At.  J  J.),  "  to  chant  praises  "  and  "  to  howl,"  are  closely 
connected.^ 

In  ordinary  sacrificial  service  the  ancient  attitude  of 
awe  at  the  death  of  the  victim  w^as  transformed  into  one 
of  gladness,  and  the  shouting  underwent  a  corresponding 
change  of  meaning.^     ]iut  piacular  rites  continued  to  be 


•  This  is  analogous  to  the  sprinkling  of  blood  on  a  tent. 

-  On  this  topic  consult,  but  witii  caution,  Movers,  Phooi.  i.  246  sq.  The 
Arabic  ahalla,  tahlll,  is  primarily  connected  with  the  slaughter  of  the  victim 
(.supra,  p.  321).  Meat  that  has  been  killed  in  the  name  of  an  idol  is  7n« 
ohilla  lighairi  'llali,  and  the  tahl'tl  includes  (1)  the  hUmUlah  of  the  sacrilicer, 
(2)  the  shouts  of  the  congregation  accompanying  this  act,  (3)  by  a  natural 
extension,  all  religious  shouting.  If,  now,  we  note  that  the  bismWdh  is  the 
form  by  -which  the  sacrilicer  excuses  his  bold  act,  and  that  tahlil  also  means 
"shrinking  back  in  terror"  (see  Niildeke  in  ZDMG.  xli.  723),  we  can 
hardly  doubt  that  the  shouting  was  originally  not  joyous,  but  an  expression 

of  awe  and  anguish.  The  derivation  of  \j^\  fjom  Jil^-  ^^"^  "'-'^^'  "'oon 
(Lagarde,  Onentalia,  ii.  19;  Snouck-Hurgronjc,  Het  mcl-kaansche  Feed,  p. 
7.5),  is  tem])tiug,  but  must  be  given  u]>.  Compare  on  the  whole  matter 
Wellh.,  p.  107  nqq. 

^  This  transition  was  probably  much  easier  tlian  it  seems  to  us  ;  for  shout- 
ing in  mourning  and  shouting  in  joy  seem  both  to  be  primarily  directed  to 
drive  away  evil  influences.  Of  course,  men,  like  children,  are  noisy  when  they 
are  glad,  but  the  conventional  shrill  cries  of  women  iii  the  East  (:<»;///''' r/V) 
are  not  natural  expressions  of  joy,  and  to  my  recollection  do  not  diller 
materially  from  the  sound  made  in  wailing.  On  this  jwint,  however,  I 
sliould  be  glad  to  be  conlirnied  or  corrected  by  other  observers. 


412  FASTING    WITH  lect.  xi. 


conducted  with  signs  of  mourning,  which  were  interpreted, 
as  w^e  have  seen,  sometimes  as  a  lamentation  for  the 
death  of  the  god,  and  sometimes  as  forms  of  penitent 
supplication. 

That  feelings  of  contrition  find  an  expression  in  acts  of 
mourning,  is  an  idea  so  familiar  to  us  that  at  first  sight  it 
seems  to  need  no  explanation ;  but  a  little  reflection  will 
correct  this  impression,  and  make  it  appear  by  no  means 
unreasonable  to  suppose  that  the  forms  of  mourning 
observed  in  supplicatory  rites  were  not  primarily  expres- 
sions of  sorrow  for  sin,  or  lamentable  appeals  to  the  com- 
passion of  the  deity,  but  simply  the  obligatory  wailing  for 
the  death  of  a  kindred  victim.  The  forms  prescribed  are 
identical  with  those  used  in  mourning  for  the  dead ;  and 
if  it  be  urged  that  this  is  merely  an  expression  of  the 
most  pungent  grief,  I  reply  that  we  have  already  found 
reason  to  be  cliary  in  assuming  that  certain  acts  are 
natural  expressions  of  sorrow,  and  to  recognise  that  the 
customs  observed  in  lamentation  for  the  dead  had  originally 
a  very  definite  meaning,  and  could  not  become  general  ex- 
pressions of  grief  till  that  meaning  was  forgotten.^  And  it 
is  surely  easier  to  suppose  that  the  ancient  rites  of  lamenta- 
tion for  the  victim  changed  their  sense,  when  men  fell  out 
of  touch  with  the  original  meaning  of  them,  than  that  they 
were  altogether  dropped  for  a  time,  and  then  resumed  with 
a  new  meaning. 

Again,  the  idea  that  the  gods  have  a  kindred  feeling  with 
their  worshippers,  and  are  touched  with  compassion  when 
they  see  them  to  be  miserable,  is  no  doubt  familiar  even  to 
early  religions.  But  formal  acts  of  worship  in  antiquity, 
as  we  have  seen  from  our  analysis  of  sacrificial  rites,  are 
directed,  not  merely  to  appeal  to  the  sentiment  of  the  deity, 
but  to  lay  him  under  a  social  obligation.  Even  in  the 
^  Supra,  p.  304  xq.,  p.  317  sq. 


LECT.    XI. 


SACRIFICE.  4 1 


o 


theology  of  the   Eabbins  penitence  atones    only   for  li^ht 
offences,   all    grave    ofTences    demanding    also    a    material 
prestaticni.''      If  this  is  the  view  of  later  Jndaism,  after  all 
tliat  had  been  tanght  by  the  prophets  as  to  the  worthless- 
ness  t)f  material  olierings,  in  the  eyes  of  a  God  who  looks 
at   tlie  heart,  it  is  hardly  to  be  tliought  that   in  heathen 
religions  elaborate   forms    of    mourning    and    supplication 
were  nothing    more    than    appeals   to   divine    compassion. 
And,   in   fact,  there  is  no  doubt  tliat  some   of  the  forms 
wliich  we  are  apt  to  take  as  expressions  of  intense  grief  or 
self-abasement  before  the  god,  had  originally  quite  another 
meaning.      For  example,  when   the  worshippers  gash  their 
own  flesh  in  rites  of  supplication,  this  is  not  an  appeal  to 
the  divine   compassion,   liut    a   purely   physical  means    of 
establishing  a  blood-bond  with  the  god.'^     Again,  the  usage 
of  religious  fasting  is  commonly  taken  as  a  sign  of  sorrow, 
the   worshippers  being  so   distressed  at   the   alienation  of 
their  god  that  they  cannot  eat ;  but  there  are  very  strong 
reasons  for  believing  that,  in  the  strict  Oriental  form  in 
which  total  abstinence  from  meat  and  drink  is  prescribed, 
fasting  is  primarily  nothing  more  than  a   preparation  for 
the  sacramental  eating  of  holy  flesh.      Some  savage  nations 
not  only  fast,  but  use  strong  purges  before  venturing  to  eat 
holy  meat ;  ^  similarly  the  Harranians  fasted  on  the  eighth 
of  Nisan,  and  then  broke  their  fast  on  mutton,  at  tlie  same 
time  offering  sheep  as  holocausts ;  *  the  modern  Jews  fast 
from  ten  in  the  morning  before  eating  the  Passover  ;  and 
even  a  modern  Catliolic  must  come  to  the  communion  witli 
an  empty  stomach.      Similarly  the  ashes  which  were  strewn 
on  the  head  in  acts  of  religious  mourning^  are  probably  in 
the  first  instance  the  ashes  of  the  victim,  and  so  sacramental, 

1  Yoma,  viii.  8,  nibp  n'n"'3y  ^j?  msso  nzYcn. 

-  Supra,  p.  303  sqq.  *  Tlioinsoii,  ^fasai  Land,  p.  430. 

♦  Fihrist,  p.  '622.  '  Ta'anlth,  ii.  2,  aud  Bartciiora's  note. 


414:  SKIN    OF 


I.ECT.   XI. 


just  as  in  ordinary  mourning  the  dust  strewn  on  the  head 
is  primarily  the  dust  from  the  grave,  which  is  thus  applied 
to  the  person  externally,  as  in  the  Arabian  sohuan,  or 
draught  of  consolation,^  it  is  taken  internally  mixed  with 
water."  On  the  whole,  then,  the  conclusion  seems  to  be 
legitimate,  that  the  ritual  of  penitent  confession  and 
humiliation  for  sin  follows  the  same  law  that  we  have 
found  to  hold  good  in  other  departments  of  ritual  observ- 
ance ;  the  original  interpretation  turns  on  a  physical  con- 
ception of  holiness,  and  it  is  only  gradually  and  incompletely 
that  physical  ideas  give  way  to  ethical  interpretation. 

To  the  account  that  has  been  given  of  various  aspects 
of  the  atoning  efficacy  of  sacrifice,  and  of  ritual  observances 
that  go  with  sacrifice,  I  have  still  to  add  some  notice  of 
a  very  remarkable  series  of  ceremonies,  in  wdiich  the  skin 
of  the  sacrosanct  victim  plays  the  chief  part.  In  Nilus's 
sacrifice  the  skin  and  hair  of  the  victim  are  eaten  up  like 
the  rest  of  the  carcase,  and  in  some  piacula,  e.g.  the 
Levitical  red  heifer,  the  victim  is  burned  skin  and  all. 
Usually,  however,  it  is  flayed ;  and  in  later  rituals,  where 
rules  are  laid  down  determining  whether  the  skin  shall 
belong  to  the  sacrificer  or  be  part  of  the  priest's  fee,  the 
hide  is  treated  merely  as  an  article  of  some  commercial 
value  which  has  no  sacred  significance.^  But  we  have  seen 
that  in  old  times  all  parts  of  the  sacrosanct  victim  were 
intensely  holy,  even  down  to  the  offal  and  excrement,  and 

'  Supra,  p.  304,  note  3. 

-  The  black  garments  of  mouniiiirj  are  primarily  sordid  garments,  stained 
■with  dust  or  ashes,  as  appears  in  the  Hebrew  root  ITp.  Sackcloth,  i.e.  hair- 
cloth, is  worn  by  mourners,  not  because  it  macerates  the  flesh,  but  because  of 
its  sordid  colour. 

^  By  the  Levitical  law  (Lev.  vii.  8)  the  skin  of  the  holocaust  goes  to  the 
ministrant  priest ;  in  other  cases  it  must  be  inferred  that  it  was  retained  by 
the  owner.  In  the  Carthaginian  tariffs  the  usage  varies,  one  temple  giving 
the  hides  of  victims  to  the  priests  and  another  to  the  owner  of  the  sacrifice 
(C.  /.  S.  Nos.  165,  167). 


LECT.    XI. 


THE   VICTIM.  41 


whatever  was  not  eaten  or  burned  was  used  for  otlier 
sacred  purposes,  and  had  the  force  of  a  charm.  The  skin, 
in  particular,  is  used  in  antique  rituals  either  to  clotlic  the 
idol  or  to  clothe  the  worshippers.  The  meaning  of  hoth 
these  rites  was  sufficiently  perspicuous  at  the  stage  of 
religious  development  in  which  the  god,  his  worshippers, 
ami  the  victim  were  all  members  of  one  kindred. 

As  regards  the  draping  of  the  idol  or  sacred  stone  in  tlie 
skin,  it  will  be  remembered  that  in  Lecture  V.  we  came  to 
tlie  conclusion  that  in  most  cases  sacred  stones  are  not 
naturally  holy,  but  are  arbitrary  erections,  wliich  become 
holy  because  the  god  consents  to  dwell  in  them.  "We  also 
find  a  widespread  idea,  persisting  even  in  the  ritual  of  the 
Jewish  Day  of  Atonement,  that  the  altar  (which  is  only  a 
more  modern  form  of  the  sacred  stone)  requires  to  be  conse- 
crated with  blood,  and  periodically  reconsecrated  in  the  same 
way.-^  In  fact  it  is  the  sacred  blood  that  makes  the  stone 
holy  and  a  habitation  of  divine  life;  as  in  all  the  other 
parts  of  ritual,  man  does  not  begin  by  persuading  his  god 
to  dwell  in  the  stone,  but  by  a  theurgic  process  he  actually 
brings  divine  life  to  the  stone.  All  sanctuaries  are  conse- 
crated  by  a-  theophany ;  but  in  the  earliest  times  the 
sacrifice  is  itself  a  rudimentary  theophany,  and  the  place 
where  sacred  blood  has  once  been  shed  is  the  fittest  place 
to  shed  it  again.  From  this  point  of  view  it  is  natural 
not  only  to  pour  blood  upon  the  altar-idol,  but  to  anoint  it 
with  sacred  fat,  to  fix  upon  it  the  heads  and  horns  of 
sacrifices,  and  so  forth.  All  tliese  tilings  are  done  in 
various  parts  of  the  world,"  and  when  the  sacred  stone  is 
on  the  way  to  become  an  idol,  and  primarily  an  animal- 

J  Ezek.  xliii.  18  sqq.  ;  Lev.  viii.  15  ;  Ezek.  xlv.  18  sqq.  ;  Lev.  xvi.  33. 

-  The  heads  of  oxen  arc  common  symbols  on  Greek  altars,  and  this  is  only 
a  modern  surrogate  for  the  actual  heads  of  victims.  The  horns  of  the 
Semitic  altar  have  perhaps  the  same  origin. 


416  SKIN    OF  LECT.    XI. 


idol,  it  is  peculiarly  appropriate  to  dress  it  in  the  skin  of 
the  divine  victim. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  erinally  appropriate  that  the 
worshipper  should  dress  himself  in  the  skin  of  a  victim, 
and  so,  as  it  were,  envelop  himself  in  its  sanctity.  To 
rude  nations  dress  is  not  merely  a  physical  comfort,  but  a 
fixed  part  of  social  religion,  a  thing  by  which  a  man  con- 
stantly bears  on  his  body  the  token  of  his  religion,  and 
which  is  itself  a  charm  and  a  means  of  divine  protection. 
Among  African  nations,  where  the  sacredness  of  domestic 
animals  is  still  acknowledged,  one  of  the  few  purposes 
for  which  a  beast  may  be  killed  is  to  get  its  skin  as  a 
cloak;  and  in  the  Book  of  Genesis  (iii.  21)  the  primitive 
coat  of  skin  is  given  to  the  first  men  by  the  deity  Himself. 
Similarly  Herodotus,  when  he  speaks  of  the  sacrifices  and 
worship  of  the  Libyans,^  is  at  once  led  on  to  observe 
that  the  regis,  or  goat-skin,  worn  by  the  statues  of  Athena, 
is  nothing  else  than  the  goat-skin,  fringed  with  thongs, 
which  was  worn  by  the  Libyan  women  ;  the  inference 
implies  that  it  was  a  sacred  dress.^  When  the  dress  of 
sacrificial  skin,  which  at  once  declared  a  man's  religion 
and  his  sacred  kindred,  ceased  to  be  used  in  ordinary  life, 
it  was  still  retained  in  holy  and  especially  in  piacular 
functions.  We  have  had  before  us  various  examples  of 
this  :  the  Assyrian  Dagon- worshipper  who  offers  the  mystic 

1  Herod.,  iv.  188  f^qq. ;  that  the  victims  were  goats  is  suggested  hy  the 
context,   but  liecomes  certain   by  comparison   of  Hippocrates,  ed.    Littre, 

vi.  356. 

-  The  thongs  correspond  to  the  fringes  on  the  garment  prescribed  by 
.Jewish  law,  which  had  a  sacred  significance  (Numb.  xv.  38  sqq.).  One  of 
the  ohlest  forms  of  the  fringed  garment  is  probably  the  rnht,  or  girdle  of 
skin  slashed  into  thongs,  which  was  worn  by  Arab  children,  and  also,  it  is 
said,  by  worshippers  at  the  Caaba.  From  this  primitive  garment  are  derived 
the  thongs  and  girdles  with  lappets  that  appear  as  amulets  among  the  Arabs 
{harlm,  morassa'a;  the  latter  is  pierced,  and  another  thong  passed  through 
it);  compare  the  magical  thongs  of  the  Luperci,  cut  from  the  skin  of  the 
piaculum,  whose  touch  cured  sterility. 


LECT.    \I. 


THE    VICTIM.  417 


fish-sacrifice  to  the  Fish-god  draped  in  a  fish-skin ;  the  old 
Phoenician  sacrifice  of  game  by  men  clothed  in  the  skin  of 
their  prey ;  the  Cyprian  sacrifice  of  a  sheep  to  the  Sheep- 
goddess,  in  which  sheep-skins  are  worn.^  Similar  examples 
are  afforded  by  the  Dionysiac  mysteries  and  other  Greek 
rites,  and  by  almost  every  rude  religion ;  while  in  later 
cults  the  old  rite  survives  at  least  in  the  religious  use  of 
animal  masks.^  When  worshippers  present  themselves  at 
the  sanctuary,  already  dressed  in  skins  of  the  sacred  kind, 
the  meaning  of  the  ceremony  is  that  they  come  to  worship 
as  kinsmen  of  the  victim,  and  so  also  of  the  god.  But 
when  the  fresh  skin  of  the  victim  is  applied  to  the 
worshipper  in  the  sacrifice,  the  idea  is  rather  an  impart- 
ing to  him  of  the  sacred  virtue  of  its  life.  Thus  in 
piacular  and  cathartic  rites  the  skin  of  the  sacrifice  is 
used  in  a  way  quite  similar  to  the  use  of  the  l)lood,  but 
dramatically  more  expressive  of  the  identification  of  the 
worshipper's  life  with  that  of  the  victim.  In  Greek 
piacula  tlie  man  on  whose  behalf  the  sacrifice  was  per- 
formed simply  put  his  foot  on  the  skin  (kcoSlov)  ;  at 
Hierapolis  the  pilgrim  put  the  head  and  feet  over  his 
own  head  while  he  knelt  on  the  skin  ; ''  in  certain  late 
Syrian  rites  a  boy  is  initiated  by  a  sacrifice  in  which  his 
feet  are  clothed  in  slippers  made  of  the  skin  of  the 
sacrifice.'*  These  rites  do  not  appear  to  have  suggested 
any  idea,  as  to  the  meaning  of  piacular  sacrifice,  different 
from  those  that  have  already  come  before  us ;  but  as  the 
skin  of  a  sacrifice  is  the  oldest  form  of  a  sacred  garment, 
appropriate  to  the  performance  of  holy  functions,  the  figure 
of  a  "  robe  of  ricfliteousness,"  which  is  found  both  in  tlie 

'  Supra,  pp.  274,  292  ;  and  Additional  Xotes  G  and  II. 

2  Such  masks  were  used  l^y  the  Arabs  of  Nejrau  in  rites  which  the  Bisliop 
Gregentius,  iu  the  laws  he  made  for  his  flock  (eh.  xxxiv.),  denounces  as 
heathenish  (?>oissonade,  Anecd.  Gr.,  vol.  v.) 

'  Dea  Syria,  Iv.  *  Actes  of  the  Leyden  Congress,  ii.  1.  336  (361). 

2   D 


418  THEOLOGICAL  lect.  xi. 

Old  Testament  and  in  the  New,  and  still  supplies  one  of 
the  commonest  theological  metaphors,  may  be  ultimately 
traced  back  to  this  source. 

On  the  whole  it  is  apparent,  from  the  somewhat  tedious  1 . 
discussion  which  I  have  now  brought  to  a  close,  that  the 
various  aspects  in  which  atoning  rites  presented  them- 
selves to  ancient  worshippers  have  supplied  a  variety  of 
religious  images  which  passed  into  Christianity,  and  still 
have  currency.  Eedemption,  substitution,  purification, 
atoning  blood,  the  garment  of  righteousness,  are  all 
terms  which  in  some  sense  go  back  to  antique  ritual. 
But  in  ancient  religion  all  these  terms  are  very  vaguely 
defined ;  they  indicate  impressions  produced  on  the  mind 
of  the  worshipper  by  features  of  the  ritual,  rather  than 
formulated  ethico- dogmatical  ideas;  and  the  attempt  to 
find  in  them  anything  as  precise  and  definite  as  the 
notions  attached  to  the  same  words  by  Christian  theo- 
logians is  altogether  illegitimate.  The  one  point  that 
comes  out  clear  and  strong  is  that  the  fundamental  idea 
of  ancient  sacrifice  is  sacramental  communion,  and  that 
all  atoning  rites  are  ultimately  to  be  regarded  as  owing 
their  efficacy  to  a  communication  of  divine  life  to  the 
worshippers,  and  to  the  establishment  or  confirmation  of 
a  living  bond  between  them  and  their  god.  In  primitive 
ritual  this  conception  is  grasped  in  a  merely  physical  and 
mechanical  shape,  as  indeed,  in  primitive  life,  all  spiritual 
and  ethical  ideas  are  still  wrapped  up  in  the  husk  of  a 
material  embodiment.  To  free  the  spiritual  truth  from 
the  husk  was  the  great  task  that  lay  before  the  ancient 
religions,  if  they  were  to  maintain  the  right  to  continue 
to  rule  the  minds  of  men.  That  some  progress  in  this 
direction  was  made,  especially  in  Israel,  appears  from  our 
examination.  But  on  the  whole  it  is  manifest  that  none 
of    the    ritual    systems    of    antiquity  was    able    by  mere 


LECT.   XI. 


METAPHORS.  419 


natural  development  to  shake  itself  free  from  the  con- 
genital defect  inherent  in  every  attempt  to  embody 
spiritual  truth  in  material  forms.  A  ritual  system  must 
always  remain  materialistic,  even  if  its  materialism  is 
disguised  under  the  cloak  of  mysticism. 


ADDITIONAL    NOTES. 


ADDITIONAL  NOTE  A  (p.  120). 

THE     TRANSFORMATIONS     OP     THE     JINN. 

I  CANNOT  recall  any  old  legend  in  which  the  jinn  cliange  from 
one  animal  form  to  another.  AVellhausen  thinks  that  the  demon 
in  Frej'tag,  Ar.  Prov.  i.  364  (iSIaidaiu,  i.  181),  which  appeared  in 
the  form  of  a  black  ostrich,  was  really  a  snake,  because  the  fever 
that  attacked  the  man  who  shot  at  it  was  such  as,  according  to 
Arabian  superstitions,  is  produced  by  a  snake  bite.  This  is  very 
ingenious,  but  hardly  conclusive.  The  idea  that  sickness  is  the 
result  of  offending  the  jinn  is  still  current  in  Arabia,  and  I  had 
myself  from  Al-mas,  a  servant  of  the  Sherlf  of  Mecca,  the  story 
of  a  ji7ini — a  hairy  creature,  apparently  an  ape — that  he  saw  in 
the  wild  country  at  the  upper  end  of  Batn  Marr ;  his  com})anion 
shot  at  it,  and  died  soon  after  Avith  the  symptoms  of  rheumatism 
fever.  In  totem  superstitions  it  is  a  common  idea  that  an  insult 
to  the  totem  is  followed  by  sickness  (Frazer,  p.  16  ff(jq.). 

The  locus  dassicus  for  the  transformation  of  the  ghul,  i.e.  the 
kind  of  jinn  that  attacks  men  and  leads  them  astray  or  devours 
them,  is  verse  8  of  the  Bdnat  So'dd  of  Ka'b  b.  Zohair,  which 
Damlri  (ii.  214)  declares  to  be  the  source  of  the  belief.  This  of 
course  is  not  correct,  as  the  verb  taghawwala  proves.  But  the 
proper  sense  of  this  verb  is  not  to  undergo  a  metamorphosis,  but 
merely  to  change  one's  aspect.  In  the  liadlth,  cited  in  the  Limn, 
■S.U.,  and  by  Damiri,  ii.  214.  16,  taffliaicwaJaf  lahu  'l-gh'ihin  is 
equivalent  to  the  German  spuken.  The  ghfd  appears  by  night, 
and  therefore  fitfully,  uncertainly,  and  in  indeterminate  form. 
Similarly,  Dhu  '1-Romma,  cited  in  the  Sihdh,  speaks  of  the  fear- 
some and  trackless  desert  where  troops  of  ostriches  taghavwalat, 
i.e.  appear  and  disappear  like  demons.     Tlie  verse  of  the  Namid 

421 


422  THE   JINN. 


NOTE   B. 


of  Jarlr,  cited  in  the  Lisdn,  xiv.  21,  stands  thus  in  the  Leyden 
MS.  f.  51r,  as  the  late  Professor  Wright  told  me, — 
Fayauman  yujdnna  'l-hatvd  ghaira  md  sihan 
wayauman  tard  minhunna  ghidan  taghawicala, 
with  the  note  al-tagatvwul  al-talawwun  waltafattul.  See  also  Ibn 
Hisham's  commentary  on  the  Bdnat  Sddd  (ed.  Guidi),  p.  75,  1.  7, 
In  all  this  I  can  see  no  support  for  the  idea  that  the  true 
form  of  the  jinn  is  serpentine,  and  that  all  other  animal  forms 
are  mere  metamorphoses ;  even  in  later  accounts,  like  that 
of  Damirl,  the  essential  prerogative  of  the  jinn  is  that  it  can 
assume  human  form.  Nor  can  I  see  any  evidence  that  in 
Imraulcais,  lii.  29,  the  "  teeth  of  ghuls  "  mean  teeth  of  serpents. 
The  interpreters  are  not  agreed  on  this  explanation,  ivhich  seems 
to  be  a  mere  piece  of  later  rationalism.  It  is  one  thing  to  say 
that  all  serpents  are  jinn,  and  another  to  say  that  all  ji7in  are 
serpents. 


ADDITIONAL  NOTE  B  (p.  130). 

GODS,    DEMONS,    AND    PLANTS    OR    ANIMALS. 

The  object   of   this   note   is   to  consider   some   difficulties  that 
may  be  felt  with  regard  to  the  argument  in  the  text. 

1.  The  importance  which  I  have  attached  to  Arabian  supersti- 
tions about  the  jinn,  as  affording  a  clue  to  the  origin  of  local 
sanctuaries,  may  appear  to  be  excessive  when  it  is  observed  that 
the  facts  are  almost  all  drawn  from  one  part  of  the  Semitic  field. 
What  evidence  is  there,  it  may  be  asked,  that  these  Arabian 
superstitions  are  part  of  the  common  belief  of  the  Semitic  race  1 
That  the  other  Semites  had  their  goblins  and  spectres  will  not  of 
course  be  denied ;  but  were  these  so  like  the  Arabian  jinn  that 
what  is  proved  as  to  the  ultimate  nature  of  the  latter  may  be 
extended  to  the  former?  To  this  I  reply,  in  the  first  place,  that 
the  Arabian  conception  proves  upon  analysis  to  have  nothing 
peculiar  about  it.  It  is  the  ordinary  conception  of  all  primitive 
savages,  and  involves  ideas  that  only  belong  to  the  savage  mind. 
To  suppose  that  it  originated  in  Arabia,  for  special  and  local 
reasons,  after  the  separation  of  the  other  Semites,  is  therefore,  to 
run  in  the  teeth  of  all  probability.  Again,  the  little  we  do  know 
about  the  goblins  of  the  Northern  Semites  is  in  full  agreement 


KOTE  B.  DEMONIAC   PLANTS.  423 

with  tho  Araltian  facts.  The  (h>mnns  wore  banished  from  Hebrew 
reh'gion,  and  hardly  appear  in  the  Old  Testament  except  in  poetic 
imagery.  But  the  DH^yb  or  hairy  ones,  the  n^b''^  or  nocturnal 
goblin,  are  exactly  like  the  Arabian ^wm  (Wellhausen,  p.  135). 

Tlie  main  point,  however,  is  that  the  savage  view  of  nature, 
which  ascribes  to  plants  and  animals  discourse  of  reason,  and  super- 
natural or  demoniac  attributes,  can  be  shown  to  have  prevailed 
among  the  Northern  Semites  as  well  as  the  Arabs.  The  savage, 
point  of  view  is  constantly  found  to  survive,  in  connection  with 
practices  of  magic,  after  it  has  been  superseded  in  religion  proper  ; 
and  the  superstitions  of  the  vulgar  in  modern  civilised  countries  are 
not  much  more  advanced  than  those  of  the  rudest  nations.  So,  toOj 
among  tlie  Semites,  magical  rites  and  vulgar  superstitions  are  not 
so  uiuch  survivals  from  the  higher  official  heathenism  of  the 
great  sanctuaries  as  from  a  lower  and  more  primitive  stage  of 
belief,  which  the  higher  forms  of  heathen  worship  overshadowed 
but  did  not  extinguish.  And  the  vicAv  of  nature  that  pervades 
Semitic  magic  is  precisely  that  savage  view  which  we  have  found 
to  underlie  the  Arabian  belief  in  the  jinn.  Of  the  magical 
])ractices  of  the  ancient  Syrians,  which  persisted  long  after  the 
introduction  of  Christianity,  some  specimens  are  preserved  in  the 
Canoiu  of  Jacob  of  Edessa,  edited  in  Syriac  by  Lagarde,  Rel.  iur. 
eccl.  ant.  (Leipz.  1856),  and  translated  by  Kayser,  Die  Canones 
Jacob's  von  Edessa  (Leipz.  1886).  One  of  these,  used  in  cases  of 
sickness,  was  to  dig  up  the  root  of  a  certain  kind  of  thorn  called 
"  ischiac,"  and  make  an  ofiering  to  it,  eating  and  drinking  beside 
the  root,  which  was  treated  as  a  guest  at  the  feast  (Qu.  38). 
Another  demoniac  plant  of  the  Northern  Semites  is  the  Baaras, 
described  by  Joseplius,  B.  J.  vii.  6.  3,  which  flees  from  those  who 
try  to  grasp  it,  and  whose  touch  is  death  so  long  as  it  is  rooted  in 
the  ground.  This  plant  seems  to  be  the  mandrake  (Ar.  yabrilh), 
about  which  the  Arabs  tell  similar  stories,  and  which  even  the 
ancient  Germans  thought  to  be  inhabited  by  a  spirit.  When  the 
plants  in  Jotham's  parable  speak  and  act  like  men,  this  is  mere 
personification ;  but  the  dispute  of  the  mallow  and  the  mandrake, 
Avhich  Maimonides  relates  from  the  forged  Nahatsean  Agriculture 
(Chwolsohn,  Ssahirr,  ii.  459,  914),  and  which  prevents  the  mallow 
from  supplying  her  prophet  with  responses,  is  a  genuine  piece  of 
old  Semitic  superstition.  In  matters  of  this  sort  we  cannot  doubt 
that  even  a  forger  correctly  represents  popular  beliefs.  As 
regards  animals,  the  demoniac  character  of   the  serpent   in  tlie 


424  SEMITIC 


NOTE    I?. 


Garden  of  Eden  is  unmistnkeable ;  the  serpent  is  not  a  mere 
temporary  disguise  of  Satan,  otherwise  its  punishment  woukl  be 
meaningless.  The  practice  of  serpent  charming,  repeatedly 
referred  to  in  the  Old  Testament,  is  also  connected  with  the, 
demoniac  character  of  the  creature ;  and  in  general  the  idea  that 
animals  can  be  constrained  by  spells,  e.g.  prevented  from  injuring 
flocks  and  vineyards  (Jacob  of  Ed.,  Qu.  46),  rests  on  the  same 
view,  for  the  power  of  wizards  is  over  demons  and  beings  that 
are  subject  to  the  demons. 

One  of  the  most  curious  of  the  Syrian  superstitions  is  as 
follows  : — When  caterpillars  infest  a  garden,  the  maidens  are 
assembled ;  a  single  caterpillar  is  taken,  and  one  of  the  girls  is 
constituted  its  mother.  The  insect  is  then  bewailed  and  buried, 
and  the  mother  is  conducted  to  the  place  where  the  other  cater- 
j)illars  are,  amidst  lamentations  for  her  bereavement.  The  whole 
of  the  caterpillars  will  then  disappear  {o}-).  cit.,  Qu.  44).  Here  it  is 
clearly  assumed  that  the  insects  understand  and  are  impressed  by 
the  tragedy  got  up  for  their  benefit.  The  Syriac  legends  of  Tfir 
'Abdin,  collected  by  Prym  and  Socin  (Gcitt.  1881),  are  full  of 
beasts  with  demoniac  powers.  In  these  stories  each  kind  of  beast 
forms  a  separate  organised  community ;  they  speak  and  act  like 
men,  but  have  supernatural  powers,  and  close  relations  to  thejimt 
that  also  occur  in  the  legends.  In  conclusion,  it  may  be  observed 
that  the  universal  Semitic  belief  in  omens  and  "uidance  "iven 
by  animals  belongs  to  the  same  range  of  ideas.  Omens  are  not 
blind  tokens ;  the  animals  know  what  they  tell  to  men. 

2.  If  the  argument  in  the  text  is  correct,  it  may  be  asked  why 
there  are  not  direct  and  convincing  evidences  of  Semitic  totemism. 
You  argue,  it  may  be  said,  that  traces  of  the  old  savage  view  of 
nature,  which  corresponds  to  totemism,  are  still  clearly  visible  in 
the  Semitic  view  of  demons.  But  in  savage  nations  that  view  is 
liabitually  conjoined  with  the  belief  that  one  kind  of  demon — or 
more  correctly  one  kind  of  plants  or  animals  endowed  with 
demoniac  qualities — is  allied  by  kinship  with  each  kindred  of 
men.  How  does  this  square  with  the  Arabian  facts,  in  which  all 
demons  or  demoniac  animals  habitually  app(;ar  as  man's  enemies  ? 
The  general  answer  to  this  difficulty  is  that  totems,  or  friendly 
demoniac  beings,  rapidly  develop  into  gods  when  men  rise  above 
pure  savagery  ;  whereas  unfriendly  beings,  lying  outside  the  circle 
of  man's  organised  life,  are  not  directly  influenced  by  the  social 
progress,  and   retain   their   primitive   characteristics   unchanged. 


N 


NOTK    15. 


TOTEM  ISM.  425 


AVlien  men  dceiu  tluiinselves  to  be  of  the  same  blood  with  a 
particular  animal  kind,  every  advance  in  their  way  of  thinking' 
about  themselves  reacts  on  their  ideas  about  the  sacred  animals. 
When  they  come  to  think  of  their  god  as  the  ancestor  of  their 
race,  they  must  also  think  of  him  as  the  ancestor  of  their  totem 
animals,  and,  so  far  as  our  observation  goes,  they  tend  to  figuie 
him  as  having  animal  form.  The  animal  god  concentrates  on  his 
own  person  the  respect  that  used  to  be  paid  to  all  animals  of  the 
totem  kind,  or  at  least  the  respect  paid  to  them  is  made  to  depend 
on  the  worship  he  receives.  Finally,  the  animal  god,  who,  as  a 
demoniac  being,  has  many  human  attributes,  is  transformed  into 
an  anthropomorphic  god,  and  his  animal  connections  fall  quite 
into  the  background.  ]>ut  nothing  of  this  sort  can  happen  to  the 
demoniac  animals  that  are  left  outside,  and  nnt  brought  into 
fellowship  with  men.  They  remain  as  they  were,  till  the  progress 
of  enlightenment — a  slow  progress  among  the  mass  of  any  race — 
gradually  strips  them  of  their  supernatural  attributes.  Thus  it  is 
natural  that  the  belief  in  hostile  demons  of  plant  or  animal  kinds 
should  survive  long  after  the  friendly  kinds  have  given  way  to 
individual  gods,  whose  original  totem  associations  are  in  great 
measure  obliterated.  At  the  stage  which  even  the  rudest  Semitic 
])eoi)les  had  reached  when  they  first  become  known  to  us,  it  would 
be  absurd  to  expect  to  find  examples  of  totemism  pure  and  simple. 
What  we  may  expect  to  find  is  the  fragmentary  survival  of  totem 
ideas,  in  the  shape  of  special  associations  between  certain  kinds  of 
animals  on  the  one  hand,  and  certain  tribes  or  religious  communi- 
ties and  their  gods  on  the  other  hand.  And  of  evidence  of  this 
kind  there  is,  we  shall  see,  no  lack  in  Semitic  antiquity.  For  the 
present  I  will  only  cite  some  direct  evidences  of  kinship  or 
l)rotherhood  between  human  communities  and  animal  kinds. 
Ibn  al-Mojawir  relates  that  when  the  B.  Harith,  a  tribe  of  South 
Arabia,  find  a  dead  gazelle,  they  wash  it,  wrap  it  in  cerecloths 
and  bury  it,  and  the  whole  tribe  mourns  for  it  seven  days 
(Sprenger,  Postrouten,  p.  151).  The  animal  is  buried  like  a  man, 
and  mourned  for  as  a  kinsman.  Among  the  Arabs  of  Sinai  the 
wabr  (the  coney  of  the  Bible)  is  the  brother  of  man,  and  it  is  said 
that  he  who  eats  his  flesh  will  never  see  father  and  mother  again. 
In  the  Ilarranian  mysteries  the  worshippers  acknowledged  dogs, 
ravens  and  ants  as  their  brothers  (Fihnst,  p.  326,  1.  27).  At 
Baalbek  the  y6vvaro9,  or  ancestral  god  of  the  town,  was  worshipped  in 
the  form  of  a  lion  (Damascius,  Vit  Isid.  §  203;  cf.  br3  nj,  "leon- 


426  ELOHIM. 


NOTE   B. 


topodion,"  Low,  Aram.  Pflanzenam.en,  p.  406  ;  G.  Hoflfmann,  Phoen. 
Inschr.  1889,  p.  27).  On  the  banks  of  the  Euphrates,  according 
to  Aristotle,  Mir.  Arcsc.  149  sq.,  there  was  found  a  species  of 
small  serpents  that  attacked  foreigners,  but  did  not  molest 
natives,  which  is  just  what  a  totem  animal  is  supposed  to  do. 

3.  If  the  oldest  sanctuaries  of  the  gods  Avere  originally  haunts  of 
a  multiplicity  of  jinn,  or  of  animals  to  which  demoniac  attributes 
were  ascribed,  w'e  should  expect  to  find,  even  in  later  times,  some 
trace  of  the  idea  that  the  holy  place  is  not  inhabited  by  a  single 
god,  but  by  a  plurality  of  sacred  denizens.  If  the  relation  between 
the  worshipping  community  and  the  sanctuary  was  formed  in  the 
totem  stage  of  thought,  when  the  sacred  denizens  were  still  veri- 
table animals,  all  animals  of  the  sacred  species  Avould  multiply 
unmolested  in  the  holy  precincts,  and  the  individual  god  of  the 
sanctuary,  when  such  a  being  came  to  be  singled  out  from  the 
indeterminate  plurality  of  totem  creatures,  would  still  be  the 
father  and  protector  of  all  animals  of  his  own  kind.  And  accord- 
ingly we  do  find  that  many  Semitic  sanctuaries  gave  shelter  to 
various  species  of  sacred  animals,  the  dogs  of  Adranus,  the  doves 
of  Astarte,  the  gazelles  of  Tabala  and  Mecca,  and  so  forth.  But, 
apart  from  this,  we  may  expect  to  find  traces  of  vague  plurality  in 
the  conception  of  the  godhead  as  associated  with  special  spots,  to 
hear  not  so  much  of  the  god  as  of  the  gods  of  a  place,  and  that 
not  in  the  sense  of  a  definite  number  of  clearly  individualised 
deities,  but  wdth  the  same  indefiniteness  as  characterises  the  con- 
ception of  the  jinn.  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  this  is  the  idea 
which  underlies  the  Hebrew  use  of  the  plural  DTlbx,  and  the 
Phoenician  use  of  obx,  in  a  singular  sense,  on  which  cf.  Hoffmann, 
op.  cit.  p.  17  sqq.  Merely  to  refer  this  to  primitive  polytheism, 
as  is  sometimes  done,  does  not  explain  how  the  plural  form  is 
habitually  used  to  designate  a  single  deity.  But  if  the  ElOlilm  of 
a  place  originally  meant  all  its  sacred  denizens,  viewed  collectively 
as  an  indeterminate  sum  of  indistinguishable  beings,  the  transition 
to  the  use  of  the  plural  in  a  singular  sense  would  follow  naturally, 
as  soon  as  this  indeterminate  conception  gave  way  to  the  concep- 
tion of  an  individual  god  of  the  sanctuary.  Further,  the  original 
indeterminate  plurality  of  the  ElOlum  appears  in  the  conception 
of  angels  as  Bne  Elohhn,  "  sons  of  Elohim,"  which,  according  to 
linguistic  analogy,  means  "beings  of  the  Elohim  kind."  In  the 
Old  Testament  the  "  sons  of  God  "  form  the  heavenly  court,  and 
ordinarily  when  an  angel  appears  on  earth  he  appears  alone  and  on 


NOTE  C.  HOLINESS. 


427 


a  special  mission.  But,  in  some  of  the  oldest  Hebrew  traditions, 
angels  frequent  holy  places,  such  as  Bethel  and  Mahanaim,  when 
they  have  no  message  to  deliver  (Gen.  xxviii.  12,  xxxii.  2). 
That  the  angels,  as  "sons  of  God,"  form  part  of  the  old  Semitii; 
mythology  is  clear  from  Gen.  vi.  2,  4,  for  the  sons  of  God  who 
contract  marriages  with  the  daughters  of  men  are  out  of  place  in 
the  religion  of  the  Old  Testament,  and  the  legend  must  have  been 
taken  over  from  a  lower  form  of  faith  ;  perhaps  it  was  a  local 
legend  connected  with  Mount  Hermon  (Hilary  on  Ps.  cxxxiii., 
cited  by  Reland,  Pcdtesthia,  p.  323).  Ewald  (Lehre  der  Bihel, 
ii.  283)  rightly  observes  that  in  Gen.  xxxii.  28-30  the  meaning 
is  that  an  angel  has  no  name,  i.e.  no  distinctive  individuality  ;  he 
is  simply  one  of  a  class ;  of.  p.  119,  note,  supra.  Yet  in  wrestling 
with  him  Jacob  wrestles  with  D'-nSx  (cf.  Hos.  xii.  4). 

That  the  Arabic  jinn  is   not   a  loan-word,  as  has  sometimes 
been  supposed,  is  shewn  by  Noldeke,  ZDMG.  xli,  717. 


ADDITIONAL  NOTE  C  (p.  143). 

HOLINESS,     UNCLEANNESS     AND     TABOO. 

A^ARious  parallels  between  savage  taboos,  and  Semitic  rules  of 
holiness  and  uncleanness,  will  come  before  us  from  time  to  time  ; 
but  it  may  be  useful  to  bring  together  at  this  point  some  detailed 
evidences  that  the  two  arc  in  their  origin  indistinguishable. 

Holy  and  unclean  things  have  this  in  common,  that  in  both  cases 
certain  restrictions  lie  on  men's  use  of  and  contact  with  them,  and 
that  the  breach  of  these  restrictions  involves  supernatural  dangers. 
The  difference  between  the  two  appears,  not  in  their  relation  to 
man's  ordinary  life,  but  in  their  relation  to  the  gods.  Holy  things 
are  not  free  to  man,  because  they  pertain  to  the  gods  ;  uncleanness 
is  shunned,  according  to  the  view  taken  in  the  higher  Semitic 
religions,  because  it  is  hateful  to  the  god,  and  therefore  not  to  be 
tolerated  in  his  sanctuary,  his  worshippers,  or  his  land.  But  that 
this  explanation  is  not  primitive  can  hardly  be  doubted,  when  we 
consider  that  the  acts  that  cause  uncleanness  are  exactly  tiie  same 
which  among  savage  nations  place  a  man  under  taboo,  and  that 
these  acts  are  often  involuntary,  and  often  innocent,  or  even 
necessary  to  society.    The  savage,  accordingly,  imposes  a  taboo  ou 


428  UNCLEANNESS 


NOTE   C. 


a  woman  in  childbed,  or  during  lier  courses,  and  on  the  man 
Avho  touches  a  corpse,  not  out  of  any  regard  for  the  gods,  but 
simply  because  birth  and  everything  connected  with  the  propaga- 
tion of  the  species  on  the  one  hand,  and  disease  and  death  on  the 
other,  seem  to  him  to  involve  the  action  of  superhuman  agencies 
of  a  dangerous  kind.  If  he  attempts  to  explain,  he  does  so  by 
supposing  that  on  these  occasions  spirits  of  deadly  power  are 
present ;  at  all  events  the  persons  involved  seem  to  him  to  be 
sources  of  mysterious  danger,  which  has  all  the  characters  of  an 
infection,  and  may  extend  to  other  people  unless  due  precautions 
are  observed.  This  is  not  scientific,  but  it  is  perfectly  intelligible, 
and  forms  the  basis  of  a  consistent  system  of  practice ;  whereas, 
when  the  rules  of  uncleanness  are  made  to  rest  on  the  will  of  the 
gods,  they  appear  altogether  arbitrary  and  meaningless.  The  affinity 
of  such  taboos  with  laws  of  uncleanness  comes  out  most  clearly 
when  Ave  observe  that  uncleanness  is  treated  like  a  contagion, 
which  has  to  be  washed  away  or  otherwise  eliminated  by  physical 
means.  Take  the  rules  about  the  uncleanness  produced  by  the 
carcases  of  vermin  in  Lev.  xi.  32  sqq. ;  whatever  they  touch 
must  be  washed ;  the  water  itself  is  then  unclean  and  can  pro- 
pagate the  contagion ;  nay,  if  the  defilement  affect  an  (unglazed) 
earthen  pot,  it  is  supposed  to  sink  into  the  pores,  and  cannot  be 
washed  out,  so  that  the  pot  must  be  broken.  Eules  like  this 
have  nothing  in  common  with  the  spirit  of  Hebrew  religion ;  they 
can  only  be  remains  of  a  primitive  superstition,  like  that  of  the 
savage  who  shuns  the  blood  of  uncleanness,  and  such  like  things, 
as  a  supernatural  and  deadly  virus.  The  antiquity  of  the  Hebrew 
taboos,  for  such  they  are,  is  shewn  by  the  way  in  which  many  of 
them  reappear  in  Arabia;  cf.  for  example  Deut.  xxi.  12,  13,  with 
the  Arabian  ceremonies  for  removing  the  impurity  of  widowhood 
(Lane,  p.  2409,  or  Taj  al- Arils,  quoted  in  Wellhausen,  p.  156).  In 
the  Arabian  form  the  ritual  is  of  purely  savage  type ;  the  danger 
to  life  that  made  it  unsafe  for  a  man  to  marry  the  woman  was 
transferred  in  the  most  materialistic  way  to  an  animal,  which  it 
was  believed  generally  died  in  consequence,  or  to  a  bird.  So,  too, 
in  the  law  for  cleansing  the  leper  (Lev.  xiv.  4  sqq.)  the  impurity 
is  transferretl  to  a  bird,  which  flies  away  with  it ;  compare  also  the 
ritual  of  the  scape-goat.  So,  again,  the  impurity  of  menstruation 
was  recognised  by  all  the  Semites,^  as  in  fact  it  is  by  all  primitive 

^  The  precept  of  the  Coran,  ii.  222,  rests  on  ancient  practice  ;  see  Baidawi 
on  the  passage,  Hamdsa,  p.  107,  last  verse,  and  Agh.  xvi.  27,  31.     For  the 


NOTE  C. 


AND    TABOO.  429 


find  ancient  iieoples.  Xow  among  savages  this  impurity  is  dis- 
tinctly connected  with  the  idea  that  the  blood  of  the  mejixpn  is 
dangerous  to  man,  and  even  the  Romans  held  that  "nihil  facile 
roperiatur  mulierum  profluuio  magis  mirificum,"  or  more  full  of 
deadly  qualities  (Pliny,  H.  N.  vii.  64).  Similar  superstitions  are 
current  with  the  Arabs,  a  great  variety  of  supernatural  powers 
attaching  themselves  to  a  woman  in  this  condition  (Cazwini,  i.  SBf)). 
Obviously,  therefore,  in  this  case  the  Semitic  taboo  is  exactly  like 
the  savage  one ;  it  has  nothing  to  do  with  respect  for  the  gods, 
but  springs  from  mere  terror  of  the  supernatural  influences 
associated  with  the  Avoman's  physical  condition.  That  unclean 
things  are  tabooed  on  account  of  their  inherent  supernatural 
powers  or  associations,  appears  further  from  the  fact  that  just  these 
things  are  most  powerful  in  magic  ;  menstruous  blood  in  particular 
is  one  of  the  strongest  of  charms  in  most  countries,  and  so  it  Avas 
among  the  Arabs  (CazwinI,  ut  supra).  Wellhausen  has  shewn  hoAV 
closely  the  ideas  of  amulet  and  ornament  are  connected  {Heid.  p. 
143),  but  has  not  brought  out  the  equally  characteristic  fact  that 
unclean  things  are  not  less  potent.  Such  amulets  are  called  by 
the  Arabs  ianj'is,  inonajjasa  ;  and  it  is  exjilained  that  the  heathen 
Arabs  used  to  tie  unclean  things,  dead  men's  bones  and  menstruous 
rags,  upon  children,  to  avert  i\iejinn  and  the  evil  eye  {Camus,  s.v.) ; 
cf.  Jacob  of  Edessa,  op.  cit.  Qu.  43. 

We  have  seen,  in  the  example  of  the  swine,  that  prohibitions 
against  using,  and  especially  eating,  certain  animals  belong  in  the 
higher  Semitic  religions  to  a  sort  of  doubtful  ground  between  the 
unclean  and  the  holy.  This  topic  cannot  be  fully  elucidated  till 
we  come  to  speak  of  sacrifice,  when  it  will  appear  probable  that 
most  of  these  restrictions,  if  not  all  of  them,  are  parallel  to  the 
taboos  which  totemism  lays  on  the  use  of  sacred  animals  as  food. 
^Meantime  it  may  be  observed  that  such  prohibitions,  like  those 
that  have  been  already  considered,  manifest  their  savage  origin 
by  the  nature  of  the  supernatural  sanction  attached  to  them.  As 
the  Elk  clan  of  the  Omahas  believe  that  they  cannot  eat  the  elk 
without  boils  breaking  out  on  their  bodies,  so  the  Syrians,  with  whom 

Syrian  heatlien,  Fihriit,  p.  319, 1.  18.  According  to  Wahidy,  Axbdh,  women 
in  their  courses  were  not  allowed  to  remain  in  the  house,  whicli  is  a 
common  savage  rule.  Girls  at  their  first  menstruation  seem  to  have  been 
strictly  confined  to  a  hut  or  tent ;  see  the  Limn  on  the  term  mo')<ir.  This 
is  also  common  all  over  the  world.  Widows  were  similarly  confined  ;  see  the 
Lexx.  .s.r.  ^Ji.k=^^. 


430  HOLINESS  NOTE  c. 

fish  were  sacred  to  Atargatis,  thought  that  if  they  ate  a  sprat  or 
an  anchovy  they  were  visited  with  ulcers,  sweUings  and  wasting 
disease.^  In  both  cases  the  punishment  of  the  impious  act  is  not 
a  divine  judgment,  in  our  sense  of  that  word,  but  flows  directly 
from  the  malignant  influences  resident  in  the  forbidden  thing, 
which,  so  to  speak,  avenges  itself  on  the  offender.  With  this  it 
agrees  that  the  more  notable  unclean  animals  possess  magical 
powers ;  the  swine,  for  example,  which  the  Saracens  as  well  as  the 
Hebrews  and  Syrians  refused  to  eat  (Sozomen,  vi.  38),  supplies 
many  charms  and  magical  medicines  (Cazwini,  i.  393). 

The  irrationality  of  laws  of  uncleanness,  from  the  standpoint  of 
spiritual  religion  or  even  of  the  higher  heathenism,  is  so  manifest 
that  they  must  necessarily  be  looked  on  as  having  survived  from 
an  earlier  form  of  faith  and  of  society.  And,  this  being  so,  I  do 
not  see  how  any  historical  student  can  refuse  to  class  them  with 
savage  taboos.  The  attempts  to  explain  them  otherwise,  which 
are  still  occasionally  met  with,  seem  to  be  confined  to  speculative 
writers,  who  have  no  knowledge  of  the  general  features  of  thought 
and  belief  in  rude  societies.  As  regards  holy  things  in  the  proper 
sense  of  the  word,  i.e.  such  as  are  directly  connected  with  the 
worship  and  service  of  the  gods,  more  difficulty  may  reasonably 
be  felt;  for  many  of  the  laws  of  holiness  may  seem  to  have  a  good 
and  reasonable  sense  even  in  the  higher  forms  of  religion,  and  to 
find  their  sufficient  explanation  in  the  habits  and  institutions  of 
advanced  societies.  At  present  the  most  current  view  of  the 
meaning  of  restrictions  on  man's  free  use  of  holy  things  is  that 
holy  things  are  the  god's  property,  and  I  have  therefore  sought 
(supra,  p.  134  sqq.)  to  show  that  the  idea  of  property  does  not 
suffice  to  explain  the  facts  of  the  case.  A  man's  property  consists 
of  things  to  which  he  has  an  exclusive  right ;  but  in  holy  things 
the  worshippers  have  rights  as  well  as  the  god,  though  their  rights 
are  subject  to  definite  restrictions.  Again,  an  owner  is  bound  to 
respect  other  people's  property  while  he  preserves  his  own ;  but 
the  principle  of  holiness,  as  appears  in  the  law  of  asylum,  can  be 
used  to  override  the  privileges  of  human  ownership.  In  this 
respect  holiness  exactly  resembles  taboo.  The  notion  that  certain 
things  are  taboo  to  a  god  or  a  chief  means  only  that  he,  as  the 
stronger  person,  and  not  only  stronger  but  invested  with  super- 

1  Menander  ap.  Vorph.,  De  Ahst.  iv.  15;  Pint.,  De  Superst.  x. ;  Selden, 
Z)e  Diis  Syria,  Synt.  ii.  Cap.  3.  For  savage  parallels,  see  Frazer,  Totemism, 
p.  1 6  sqq. 


NOTE   C. 


AND    TABOO.  431 


natural  power,  and  so  very  dangerous  to  offend,  will  not  allow 
any  one  else  to  meddle  with  them.  To  bring  the  taboo  into  force 
it  is  not  necessary  that  there  should  be  prior  possession  on  the 
part  of  god  or  chief ;  other  people's  goods  may  become  taboo,  and 
be  lost  to  their  original  owner,  merely  by  contact  with  the  sacred 
person  or  with  sacred  things.  Even  the  ground  on  which  a  king 
of  Tahiti  trod  became  taboo,  just  as  the  place  of  a  theophany  was 
thenceforth  holy  among  the  Semites.  Nor  does  it  follow  that 
because  a  thing  is  taboo  from  the  use  of  man,  it  is  therefore  in  any 
real  sense  appropriated  to  the  use  of  a  god  or  sacred  person ;  the 
fundamental  notion  is  merely  that  it  is  not  safe  for  ordinary 
people  to  use  it ;  it  has,  so  to  speak,  been  touched  by  the  infection 
of  holiness,  and  so  becomes  a  new  source  of  supernatural  danger. 
In  this  respect,  again,  the  rules  of  Semitic  holiness  show  clear 
marks  of  their  origin  in  a  system  of  taboo  ;  the  distinction  that 
holy  things  are  employed  for  the  use  of  the  gods,  while  unclean 
things  are  simply  forbidden  to  man's  use,  is  not  consistently 
carried  out,  and  there  remain  many  traces  of  the  view  that  holi- 
ness is  contagious,  just  as  uncleanness  is,  and  that  things  which 
are  to  be  retained  for  ordinary  use  must  be  kept  out  of  the  way  of 
the  sacred  infection.  Of  things  undoubtedly  holy,  but  not  in  any 
way  used  for  the  divine  service,  the  consecrated  camels  of  the 
Arabs  afford  a  good  example.  But  in  old  Israel  also  we  find 
something  of  the  same  kind.  By  the  later  law  (Lev.  xxvii.  27) 
the  firstling  of  a  domestic  animal  that  could  not  be  sacrificed,  and 
which  the  owner  did  not  care  to  redeem,  was  sold  for  the  benefit 
of  the  sanctuary,  but  by  the  old  law  (Ex.  xiii.  13,  xxxiv.  20)  its 
neck  was  broken — a  less  humane  rule  than  that  of  Arabia,  where 
animals  tabooed  from  human  use  were  allowed  to  run  freo.^ 

Of  the  contagiousness  of  holiness  there  are  many  traces  exactly 
similar  to  taboo.  In  Isa.  Ixv.  5  the  heathen  rmjske  warn  the 
bystander  not  to  approach  them  lest  he  become  taboo.^  The  flesh 
of  the  Hebrew  sin-offering,  which  is  holy  in  the  first  degree,  con- 
veys a  taboo  to  every  one  who  touches  it,  and  if  a  drop  of  the 
blood  falls  on  a  garment,  this  must  be  washed,  i.e.  the  sanctity 
must  be  washed  out,  in  a  holy  place,  while  the  earthen  pot  in 

^  This  parallel  shows  that  the  Arabian  institution  is  not  a  mere  degenerate 
form  of  an  older  consecration  to  positive  sacred  uses. 

2  The  suffix  shows  that  the  verb  is  transitive  ;  not  "  for  I  am  holier  than 
thou,"  but  "for  I  would  sanctify  thee."  We  should  therefore  poiut  it  as 
Pid. 


432  SACRED  NOTE  c. 

wliich  the  sacrifice  is  sodden  must  be  broken,  as  in  the  case  where 
dead  vermin  falls  in  a  vessel  and  renders  it  unclean  (Lev.  vi.  27  sq. 
[Heb.  ver.  20  sq.'\ ;  of.  Lev.  xvi.  26,  28).  At  Mecca,  in  the  times 
of  heathenism,  the  sacred  circuit  of  the  Caaba  was  made  by  the 
Bedouins  either  naked,  or  in  clothes  borrowed  from  one  of  the 
Horns,  or  religious  community  of  the  sacred  city.  Wellhausen  has 
shown  that  this  usage  was  not  peculiar  to  Mecca,  for  at  the 
sanctuary  of  Al-Jalsad  also  it  Avas  customary  for  the  sacrificer  to 
borrow  a  suit  from  the  priest ;  and  the  same  custom  appears  in  the 
worship  of  the  Tyrian  Baal  (2  Kings  x.  22),  to  which  it  may  be 
added  that,  in  2  Sam.  vi.  14,  David  wears  the  priestly  ephod  at 
the  festival  of  the  inbringing  of  the  ark.  He  had  put  off  his 
usual  clothes,  for  Michal  calls  his  conduct  a  shameless  exposure 
of  his  person ;  see  also  1  Sam.  xix.  24.  The  Meccan  custom  is 
explained  by  saying  that  they  would  not  perform  the  sacred  rite 
in  garments  stained  with  sin,  but  the  real  reason  is  quite  different. 
It  appears  that  sometimes  a  man  did  make  the  circuit  in  his  own 
clothes,  but  in  that  case  he  could  neither  wear  them  again  nor  sell 
them,  but  had  to  leave  them  at  the  gate  of  the  sanctuary  (Azraci, 
p.  125).  They  became  taboo  by  contact  with  the  holy  place  and 
function.  If  any  doubt  remains  as  to  the  correctness  of  this  ex- 
planation it  will,  I  trust,  be  dispelled  by  a  quotation  from  Short- 
land's  Southern  Districts  of  New  Zealand  (p.  293  sq.),  which  has  been 
given  to  me  by  my  friend  Frazer.  "A  slave  or  other  person  not 
sacred  would  not  enter  a  'wahi  tapu,'  or  sacred  place,  without 
having  first  stripped  off  his  clothes ;  for  the  clothes,  having 
become  sacred  the  instant  they  entered  the  precincts  of  the  '  wahi 
tapu,'  would  ever  after  be  useless  to  him  in  the  ordinary  business 
of  his  life." 

In  the  case  of  the  garment  stained  by  the  blood  of  the  sin- 
offering,  we  see  that  taboos  produced  by  contact  with  holy  things, 
like  those  due  to  uncleanness,  can  be  removed  by  washing.  In 
like  manner  among  the  Jews  the  contact  of  a  sacred  volume  or  a 
phylactery  "  defiled  the  hands,"  and  called  for  an  ablution,^  and 
the  high  priest  on  the  Day  of  Atonement  washed  his  flesh  with 
Avater,  not  only  when  he  put  on  the  holy  garments  of  the  day,  but 
when  he  put  them  off  (Lev.  xvi.  24  ;  cf.  Mishna,  YOmd,  viii.  4). 
In  savage  countries  such  ablutions  are  taken  to  be  a  literal 
physical  removal  of  the  contagious  principle  of  the  taboo,  and  all 
symbolical   interpretations  of   them  are  nothing   more  than   an 

1  See  p.  405,  supra. 


NOTE   C. 


TxARMEXTS.  433 


attempt,  in  higher  stages  of  religious  development,  to  jvistify 
adhesion  to  traditional  ritual. 

These  examples  may  suffice  to  show  that  it  is  impossible  to 
separate  the  .Semitic  doctrine  of  holiness  and  uncleanness  from  the 
system  of  taboo.  If  any  one  is  not  convinced  by  them,  I  am 
satisfied  that  he  will  not  be  convinced  by  an  accumulation  of 
evidence.  But  as  the  subject  is  curious  in  itself,  and  may 
possibly  be  found  to  throw  light  on  some  obsciire  customs,  I  will 
conclude  this  part  of  the  subject  by  some  additional  remarks,  of 
a  more  conjectural  character,  on  the  costume  worn  at  the  sanctuary. 

The  use  of  special  vestments  by  priestly  celebrants  at  religious 
functions  is  very  widespread,  and  has  relations  which  cannot  be 
illustrated  till  we  come  to  speak  of  sacrifice.^  But  it  is  certain 
that  originally  every  man  was  his  own  priest,  and  the  ritual 
observed  in  later  times  by  the  priests  is  only  a  development  of 
■what  was  originally  observed  by  all  worshippers.  As  regards  the 
matter  of  vestments,  it  was  certainly  an  early  and  widespread 
custom  to  make  a  difference  between  the  dress  of  ordinary  life 
and  that  donned  on  sacred  occasions.  The  ancient  Hebrews,  on 
approaching  the  presence  of  the  Deity,  either  washed  their 
clothes  (Ex.  xix.  10)  or  changed  them  (Gen.  xxxv.  2),  that  is, 
put  on  their  best  clothes,  and  the  women  also  wore  their  jewels 
(Hos.  ii.  13  [15];  cf.  Sozomen's  account  of  the  feast  at  Mamre, 
H.  E.  ii.  4). 

The  washing  is  undoubtedly  to  remove  possible  uncleanness, 
and  in  Gen.  xxxv.  2  the  change  of  garments  has  the  same 
association.  But  the  instances  given  above  shew  that,  if  it  was 
important  not  to  carry  impurity  into  the  sanctuary,  it  was  equally 
necessary  not  to  carry  into  ordinary  life  the  marks  of  contact  with 
holy  places  and  things.  As  all  festive  occasions  in  antiquity  were 
sacred  occasions,  it  may  bo  presumed  that  best  clothes  wore  also 
holy  clothes,  reserved  for  festal  purposes.  They  were  perfumed 
(Gen.  xxvii.  15,  27),  and  perfume  among  the  Semites  is  a  very 
holy  thing  (Pliny,  xii.  54),  used  in  purifications  (Herod.,  i.  198), 
and  applied,  according  to  Phoenician  ritual,  to  all  those  who 
stood  before  the  altar,  clad  in  the  long  byssus  robes,  with  a  single 
purple  stripe,  which  were  appropriated  to  religious  offices  (Silius, 
iii.  23  sqq.;  cf.  Herodian,  v.  5.  10).  Jewels,  too,  such  as  women 
wore  in  the  sanctuary,  had  a  sacred  character ;  the  Syriac  word 

^  Sec  -what  is  said  of  the  skiu  of  the  victim  as  furnishing  a  sacred  dress, 
siqrra,  p.  416  sq. 

2e 


434  JEWELS. 


N()TE   C. 


for  an  earring  is  cddshd,  "the  holy  thing,"  and  generally  speaking 
jewels  serve  as  amulets.^  On  the  whole,  therefore,  holy  dress  and 
gala  dress  are  one  and  the  same  thing,  and  it  seems,  therefore, 
legitimate  to  suppose  that  in  early  times  best  clothes  meant  clothes 
that  were  taboo  for  the  purposes  of  ordinary  life.  But  of  course 
the  great  mass  of  people  in  a  poor  society  could  not  keep  a 
special  suit  for  sacred  occasions.  Such  persons  w^ould  either 
wash  their  clothes  after  as  well  as  before  any  specially  sacred 
function  (Lev.  vi.  27,  xvi.  26,  28),  or  Avould  have  to  borrow 
sacred  garments.  Shoes  could  not  well  be  washed,  unless  they 
were  mere  linen  stockings,  as  in  the  Phoenician  sacred  dress 
described  by  Herodian ;  they  were  therefore  put  off  before 
treading  on  holy  ground  (Ex.  iii,  5  ;  Josh.  v.  15,  etc.).- 

Among  primitive  peoples,  taboos  are  often  used  to  protect 
human  rights  by  a  supernatural  sanction,  or  to  cover  the  encroach- 
ments of  chiefs  and  privileged  persons  on  the  rights  of  others. 
To  the  latter  usage  a  Semitic  parallel  has  been  given  above 
(supra,  p.  136),  while  an  exact  parallel  to  the  former  lies  in  the 
usage  of  laying  a  curse  on  an  object  to  prevent  it  from  being 
interfered  with  (Judg.  xvii.  2).  Among  the  older  Hebrews  the 
obligation  of  a  curse  does  not  depend  on  any  consideration  of  its 
reasonableness  (1  Sam.  xiv.  24  sqq.) ;  it  is  a  mechanical  taboo. 
Compare  for  the  Arabs,  Wellh.,  Heid.  p.  1 25  sqq.  In  Zech.  v.  3 
it  is  a  new  thing,  characteristic  of  a  better  age,  that  the  curse 
of  God  seizes  on  every  thief  or  perjurer,  without  having  been 
specially  invoked  in  each  case ;  cf.  Dlw.  HodJi.  No.  245. 

Closely  allied  to  this  kind  of  curse  is  the  ban  (Heb.  herem)  by 
which  impious  sinners,  or  enemies  of  the  community  and  its  god, 
were  devoted  to  utter  destruction.  The  ban  is  a  form  of  devotion 
to  the  deity,  and  so  the  verb  "to  ban"  is  sometimes  rendered 
"  consecrate "  (Micah  iv.  13)  or  "devote"  (Lev.  xxvii.  28  sq.). 
But  in  the  oldest  Hebrew  times  it  involved  the  utter  destruction, 
not  only  of  the  persons  involved,  but  of  their  property ;  and  only 

^  As  amulets,  jewels  are  mainly  worn  to  protect  the  chief  organs  of  action 
(the  hands  and  the  feet),  but  especially  the  orifices  of  the  body  (ear-rings  ; 
nose-rings,  lianging  over  the  mouth  ;  jewels  on  the  forehead,  hanging  down 
and  protecting  the  eyes).  Similarly  the  lower  orifices  of  the  trunk  are 
protected  by  clothing,  which  has  a  sacred  meaning  (stipra,  p.  416  n  ).  Similar 
remarks  apply  to  tattooing,  staining  with  stibium  and  henna,  etc. 

2  [A  person  about  to  consult  the  oracle  of  Trophonius,  after  being  washed 
and  anointed,  put  on  a  linen  shirt  and  shoes  of  the  country,  I'^oh-Aaa-iAiioi 
Wi^upim;  Kpri-r7}a(  (Pausauias,  ix.  39). — J.  G.  Frazer.] 


NOTK   D. 


THE    BAN.  43; 


niotals,  after  they  had  passed  through  the  fire,  were  ailded  to  the 
treasure  of  the  sanctuary  (Josh.  vi.  24-,  vii.  24- ;  1  Sam.  xv,). 
Even  cattle  were  not  sacriiiced,  but  simply  slain,  and  the  devoted 
city  must  not  be  rebuilt  (Dout.  xiii.  16  ;  Josh.  vi.  26).^  Such  a 
lian  is  a  taboo,  enforced  by  the  fear  of  supernatural  penalties 
(1  Kings  xvi.  34),  and,  as  with  taboo,  the  danger  arising  from  it 
is  contagious  (l)eut.  vii.  26 ;  Josh,  vii.)  ;  he  that  brings  a 
devoted  thinfr  into  his  house  falls  under  the  same  l)an  himself. 


ADDITIONAL  NOTE  I)  (p.  148). 

TABOOS  ON  THE  INTERCOURSE  OF  THE  SEXES. 

According  to  Herodotus,  ii.  64,  almost  all  peoples,  except  the 
(Ireeks  and  P^gyptians,  jxia-yovTai  eV  Ipolm  kul  airb  yvuaiKwv 
dvicrra^ei'ot  oAourot  ia-ipxf^i'Tat,  h  Ipov.  This  is  good  evidence  of 
what  the  Greeks  and  Egyptians  practised  ;  but  the  assertion  about 
other  nations  is  incorrect,  at  least  as  regards  the  Semites  and 
parts  of  Asia  IMinor,^  whose  religion  had  much  in  common  witli 
theirs.  As  regards  the  evidence,  it  comes  to  the  same  thing 
whether  we  are  told  that  certain  acts  were  forbidden  at  the 
sanctuary,  or  to  pilgrims  bound  for  the  sanctuary,  or  that  no  one 
could  enter  the  sanctuary  without  purification  after  committing 
then).  We  find  that  among  the  Arabs  sexual  intercourse  was 
forbidden  to  pilgrims  to  Mecca.  The  same  rule  obtained  among 
the  Minaeans  in  connection  with  the  sacred  office  of  collecting 
frankincense  (Pliny,  H.  N.  xii.  54).  Among  the  Hebrews  we 
find  the  restriction  in  connection  with  the  theophany  at  Sinai 
(Ex.  xix.  15)  and  the  use  of  consecrated  bread  (1  Sam.  xxi.  5); 
Sozomen,  ii.  4,  attests  it  for  the  heathen  feast  at  Mamre ;  and 
Herodotus  himself  tells  us  that  among  the  Babylonians  and  Arabs 

'  In  Jiidg.  ix.  45  the  site  is  sown  with  salt,  which  is  ordinarily  explained 
with  refeieuce  to  the  infeitility  of  saline  {ground.  But  the  strewing  of  salt 
has  elsewhere  a  religious  meaning  (Ezek.  xliii.  24),  and  is  a  symbol  of 
consecration.     Similarly  Hesychius  explains  the  phrase,  upa;  tTirTiTpxi-  iCi$ 

*  See  the  inscription  of  Apollo  Lcrnienus,  Journ.  Ildl.  Studies,  viii.  380 
*2'/m — ^^^^  ^^**  ^^^  ^  Greek  cult. 


436  TABOOS    ON 


NOTE   D. 


every  conjugal  act  was  immediately  followed,  not  only  by  an 
ablution,  but  by  such  a  fumigation  as  is  still  practised  in  the 
Siidan  (Herod.,  i.  198).  This  restriction  is  not  directed  against 
immorality,  for  it  applies  to  spouses ;  nor  does  it  spring  from 
asceticism,  for  the  temples  of  the  Semitic  deities  were  thronged 
Avith  sacred  prostitutes ;  who,  however,  were  careful  to  retire  with 
their  partners  outside  the  sacred  precincts  (Herod.,  i.  199,  e^w  toO 
Ipov ;  cf.  Hos.  iv.  14,  Avhich  curiously  agrees  in  expression  with 
Ham.  p.  599,  second  verse,  where  the  reference  is  to  the  love- 
making  of  the  Arabs  just  outside  the  himd). 

The  extension  of  this  kind  of  taboo  to  warriors  on  an  expedition 
is  common  among  rude  peoples,  and  we  know  that  it  had  place 
among  the  Arabs ;  see  Agh.  xiv.  67  (Tabari,  ed.  Kosegarten,  i. 
144),  XV.  161,  and  the  verse  of  Al-Akhtal,  cited  by  Freytag, 
Hamdsa,  Vers.  Lot.  ii.  154.  In  the  Old  Testament  war  and 
Avarriors  are  often  spoken  of  as  consecrated, —  a  phrase  which  seems 
to  be  connected,  not  merely  Avith  the  use  of  sacred  ceremonies  at 
the  opening  of  a  campaign,  but  Avith  the  idea  that  Avar  is  a  holy 
function,  and  the  camp  a  holy  place  (Deut.  xxiii.  10-15).  That 
the  taboo  on  sexual  intercourse  applied  to  Avarriors  in  old  Israel 
cannot  be  positively  affirmed,  but  is  probable  from  Deut.  xxiii. 

10,  11,  compared  Avith  1  Sam,  xxi.  5,  6  [E.V,  4,  5] ;  2  Sam.  xi. 

11.  The  passage  in  1  Sam.,  Avhich  has  ahvays  been  a  crux, 
interpretum,  calls  for  some  remark.  It  seems  to  me  that  the  text 
can  be  translated  as  it  stands,  if  only  Ave  take  cnp'  as  a  plural, 
which  is  possible  Avithout  adding  \  David  says,  "l^ay,  but  Avomen 
are  forbidden  to  us,  as  has  always  been  my  rule  Avhen  I  go  on  an 
expedition,  so  that  the  gear  (clothes,  arms,  etc.)  of  the  young 
men  is  holy  even  Avhen  it  is  a  common  (not  a  sacred)  journey ; 
hoAv  much  more  so  Avhen  [Prov.  xxi.  27]  to-day  they  Avill  be 
consecrated,  gear  and  all."  David  distinguishes  between  expedi- 
tions of  a  common  kind,  and  campaigns  Avhich  Avere  opened  by 
the  consecration  of  the  warriors  and  their  gear.  He  hints  that 
his  present  excursion  is  of  the  second  kind,  and  that  the  ceremony 
of  consecration  will  take  place  as  soon  as  he  joins  his  men  ;  but  he 
reminds  the  priest  that  his  custom  has  been  to  enforce  the  rules 
of  sanctity  even  on  ordinary  expeditions.  Uip''  should  perhaps 
be  pointed  as  Pual.  The  Avord  mvy  might  more  exactly  be 
rendered  "  taboo,"  for  it  is  evidently  a  technical  expression.  So 
in  Jer.  xxxvi.  5,  "  I  am  iivy,  I  cannot  go  into  the  temple,"  does 
not  mean  "I  am  imprisoned"  (cf.  ver.  19),  but  "I  am  restrained 


NOTE  E. 


WARRIORS.  437 


from  entering  the  sanctuary  by  a  ceremonial  impurity."  It  seems 
to  me  that  the  proverbial  31Ty"l  "ilVy,  one  of  tliose  phrases  whicli 
name  two  categories,  under  one  or  other  of  which  everyboily  is 
included,  means  "he  who  is  under  taboo,  and  he  who  is  free;" 
cf.  also  nvi':,  1  Sam.  xxi.  7  [8],  and  mvy,  "tempus  clausum."  The 
same  sense  appears  in  Arabic  mo'dr,  api)lied  to  a  girl  who  is  shut 
up  under  the  taboo  which,  in  almost  all  early  nations,  affects  girls 
at  the  age  of  puberty. 


ADDITIONAL  NOTE  E  (p.  195). 

THE   SUPPOSED    PHALLIC   SIGNIFICANCE   OF   SACRED    POSTS    AND 

PILLARS. 

That  sacred  posts  and  pillars  among  the  Semites  are  phallic 
symbols  is  an  opinion  which  enjoys  a  certain  currency,  mainly 
through  the  influence  of  Movers ;  but,  as  is  so  often  the  case  Avith 
the  theories  of  that  author,  the  evidence  in  its  favour  is  of  the 
slenderest.  For  the  pre-Hellenistic  period  INfovers  relies  on  1 
Kings  XV.  13,  2  Chron.  xv.  16,  taking  m^DD,  after  the  Vulgate,  to 
mean  sinndacrum  Pviapi  ;  but  this  is  a  mere  guess,  not  supported 
by  the  other  ancient  versions.  He  also  appeals  to  Ezek.  xvi.  17, 
which  clearly  does  not  refer  to  phallic  worship,  but  to  images  of 
the  Baalim  ;  the  passage  is  imitated  from  Hos.  ii.  ISIany  recent 
commentators  suppose  that  T,  "hand,"  in  Isa.  Ivii.  8  means  the 
phallus.  This  is  the  merest  conjecture,  and,  even  if  it  were 
certain,  the  use  of  'V  in  the  sense  of  cippus,  signpost,  would  still 
have  to  be  explained,  not  by  supposing  that  every  monument  or 
road  mark  was  a  phallic  pillar,  but  from  the  obvious  symbolism 
which  gives  us  the  word  fingerpost.  The  Phoenician  cippi 
dedicated  to  Tanith  and  Baal  Ilamman  often  have  a  hand  figuretl 
on  them,  but  a  real  hand,  not  a  phallus. 

In  ancient  times  obscene  symbols  were  used  without  offence  to 
denote  sex,  and  female  symbols  of  this  kind  are  found  in  many 
Phoenician  grottoes  scratched  upon  the  rock.  Herodotus,  ii.  lOG, 
says  that  he  saw  in  Syria  Palsestina  stelae  engraved  with  ywat/co? 
aiSoia,  presumal)ly  massehoth  dedicated  to  female  deities ;  but  how 
this  can  support  the  view  that  the  mas,^eha  represents  avhph<i 
alhoiov  I  am  at  a  loss  to  see.     Indeed,  the  whole- phallic  theory 


438  PHALLIC    SYMBOLS.  note    f. 

seems  to  be  wrecked  on  the  fact  that  the  masseha  represents  male 
and  female  deities  indifl'erently.  At  a  later  date  the  two  great 
pillars  that  stood  in  the  Propylaea  of  the  temple  of  Hierapolis  are 
called  phalli  by  Lucian  {Dea  Syr.  xvi.).  Such  twin  pillars  are 
very  common  at  Semitic  temples ;  even  the  temple  at  Jerusalem 
had  them,  and  they  are  shewn  on  coins  representing  the  temple  at 
Paphos ;  so  that  Liician's  evidence  seems  important,  especially  as 
he  tells  us  that  they  bore  an  inscription  to  the  effect  that  "  these 
phalli  were  set  up  by  Dionysus  to  his  mother  Hera."  But  the 
inscription  appears  to  have  been  in  Greek,  and  ])roves  only  that 
the  Greeks,  who  were  accustomed  to  phallic  symbols  in  Dionysus- 
Avorship,  and  habitually  regarded  the  licentious  sacred  feasts  of 
the  Semites  as  Dionysiac,  put  their  own  interpretation  on  the 
pillars.  In  §  xxviii.  of  Lucian's  work  it  clearly  appears  that  the 
meaning  and  use  of  the  pillars  was  an  open  question.  Men  were 
accustomed  to  ascend  them,  and  spend  a  week  on  the  top — like 
the  Christian  Stylites  of  the  same  region.  Lucian  thinks  that 
this  too  was  done  because  of  Dionysus,  but  the  natives  said  either 
that  at  the  immense  height  (which  is  stated  at  300  fathoms)  they 
held  near  converse  with  the  gods  and  prayed  for  the  good  of  all 
Syria,  or  that  the  practice  was  a  memorial  of  the  flood,  when  men 
Avere  driven  by  fear  to  ascend  trees  and  mountains.  It  is  not 
easy  to  extract  anything  phallic  out  of  these  statements. 

Besides  this,  Movers  (i.  680)  cites  the  statement  of  Arnobius, 
Adv.  Geyites,  v.  19  (p.  212),  that  phalli,  as  signs  of  the  grace  of  the 
deity,  were  presented  to  the  mystse  of  the  Cyprian  Venus;  but 
the  use  of  the  phallus  as  an  amulet — which  was  very  widespread 
in  antiquity — can  throw  no  light  on  the  origin  of  sacred  pillars. 
Everything  else  that  he  adduces  is  purely  fantastic  and  without  a, 
l)article  of  evidence,  and  I  have  not  found  anything  in  more  recent 
writers  to  strengthen  his  argument. 


ADDITIONAL  NOTE  F  (p.  227). 

SACRED    TRIBUTE    IN    ARABIA THE    GIFT    OF    FIRSTLINGS. 

I    HAVE  stated  in  the  text  that  the  idea   of  sacred  tribute   has 
little  or  no  place  among  the  nomadic  Arabs,  and  it  will  hardly  be 


NOTK   F. 


SACRED    TRIBUTE.  439 


(lisputctl  tliat,  hroaJly  speaking,  this  statement  accords  with  the 
facts.  ]Uit  it  is  important  to  determine,  with  as  much  precision 
as  possihk',  whether  the  conception  of  tribute  and  gifts  of  homage 
paid  to  the  deity  had  any  place  at  all  in  the  old  religion  of  the 
purely  nomadic  Semites,  and  if  it  had,  to  define  that  place  with 
exactness.  As  tlie  full  discussion  of  this  question  touches  on 
matters  which  go  beyond  the  subject  of  Lecture  YIL,  I  have 
reserved  the  topic  for  an  additional  note. 

Among  the  agricultural  Semites  the  idea  of  a  sacred    tribute 
ai)pear3   mainly    in    connection   Avith    first-fruits    and    tithes    of 
agricultural  jjroduce.     Animal  sacrifices  were  ultimately  brouglit 
\mder  the  category  of  gifts  of  homage ;  and  so,  when  they  were 
not  presented  as  free-will  offerings,  but  in  accordance  with  ritual 
laws  that  demanded  certain  definite  oblations  for  definite  occasions, 
they  also  came  to  be  looked  upon  as  a  kind  of  tribute.     But  we 
have  seen  that,  even  in  the  later  rituals,  there  was  a  clear  distinction 
between  cereal  oblations,  which  were  simply  payments  to  the  god, 
and  animal  sacrifices,  which  were  used  to  furnish  a  feast  for  the 
god  and  his  worshippers  together.       The    explanation   that    the 
victim  is  wholly  given  up  to  the  god,  who  then  gives  back  part  of 
it  to  the  Avorshipi)er,  that  he  may  feast  at  the  temple  as  the  guest 
of  his  deity,  is  manifestly  too  artificial  to  be  regarded  as  primitive  ; 
and  if,  on  the  other  hand,  we  look  on  a  sacrifice  simply  as  a  feast 
provided  by  the  worshipper,  at  which  the  god  is  the  chief  guest, 
it  does  not  appear  that,  according  to  ancient  ideas,  any  payment 
of  tribute,  or  even  any  gift,  is  involved.     Hospitality  is  not  placed 
by  early  nations  under  the   category   of   a  gift ;  when   a   man 
slaughters  an  animal,  every  one  who  is  ])resent  has  his  share  in 
the  feast  as  a  matter  of  course,  and  those  who  eat  do  not  feel  that 
any  jjresi'nt  has  been  made  to  them.    And  in  like  manner  it  seems 
very  doubtful  whether  the  oblations  of  milk  which  were  poured 
out  before  certain  Arabian  idols  can  in  any  proper  sense  be  called 
n-ifts — i.e.  transfers  of  valuable  property — for  in  the  desert  it  is 
still  a  shame  to  sell  milk  (Doughty,  i.  215,  ii.  443),  and  a  draught 
from  the  milk-bowl  is  never  refused  to  any  one.     In  a  society 
where   milk  ami   meat  are  never  sold,  and  where  only  a  churl 
refuses  to  share  these  articles  of  food  with  every  by-passer,  we 
must  not  look  to  the  sacrificial  meal  as  a  proof  that  the  Arabs 
])aid  tribute  to  their  gods. 

The  agricultural  tribute  of  first-fruits  and  tithes  is  a  charge  on 
the  produce  of  the  land,  paid  to  the  gods  as  Baalim  or  landlords. 


440  TAXATION 


NOTE   F. 


In  this  form  tribute  cannot  appear  among  pure  nomads.  But 
tribute  is  also  paid  to  kings  who  are  not  landlords,  by  subjects 
who  are  not  their  tenants.  An  example  of  such  a  tribute  is  the 
royal  tithe  in  Israel,  which  was  paid  by  the  free  landowners ;  and 
on  this  analogy  it  seems  quite  conceivable  that  a  sacred  tribute 
paid  to  the  god,  as  king  or  chief  of  his  worshippers,  might  arise 
in  a  purely  nomadic  community.  In  examining  this  possibility, 
however,  we  must  have  regard  to  the  actual  constitution  of 
Arabian  society. 

Among  the  free  tribes  of  the  Arabian  desert  there  is  no  taxa- 
tion, and  the  chiefs  derive  no  revenue  from  their  tribesmen,  but, 
on  the  contrary,  are  expected  to  use  their  wealth  Avith  generosity 
for  the  public  benefit.  A  modern  Sheikh  or  Emir,  according  to 
Burckhardt's  description  (Bed.  and  WaJi.  i.  118),  is  expected  to 
treat  strangers  in  a  better  style  than  any  other  member  of  the 
tribe,  to  maintain  the  poor,  and  to  divide  among  his  friends 
whatever  presents  he  may  receive.  "  His  means  of  defraying  these 
expenses  are  the  tribute  he  exacts  from  the  Syrian  villages,  and 
his  emoluments  from  the  jNIecca  pilgrim  caravan," — in  short,  black- 
mail. Black-mail  is  merely  a  regulated  form  of  pillage,  and  the 
gains  derived  from  it  correspond  to  those  which  in  earlier  times 
came  directly  from  the  plundering  of  enemies  and  strangers.  In 
ancient  Arabia  the  chief  took  the  fourth  part  of  the  spoils  of 
war  {Ham.  p.  336,  last  verse;  Wacidi,  ed.  Kr.  p.  10),  and  had 
also  certain  other  perquisites,  particularly  the  right  to  select 
for  himself,  before  the  division,  some  special  gift,  such  as  a 
damsel  or  a  sword  (the  so-called  safdyd,  Ham.  p.  458,  last  verse  ; 
and  Abu  Obaida  ap.  Eeiske,  An.  Mos.  i.  26  sqq.  of  the  notes).^ 
Among  the  Hebrews,  in  like  manner,  the  chief  received  a  liberal 
share  of  the  booty  (1  Sam.  xxx.  20),  including  some  choice  gift 
corresponding  to  the  mfdijil  (Judg.  v.  30,  viii.  24).  In  the 
Levitical  law  a  fixed  share  of  the  spoil  is  assigned  to  the 
sanctuary  (Num.  xxxi.  28  sqq.),  just  as  in  the  Moslem  theocracy 
the  chief's  fourth  is  changed  to  a  fifth,  payable  to  Allah  and  his 
prophet,  but  partly  used  for  the  discharge  of  burdens  of  charity 
and  the  like,  such  as  in  old  times  fell  upon  the  chiefs  (Sura 
viii.  42).  These  fixed  sacred  tributes  are  modern,  both  in  Arabia 
and  in  Israel ;  but  even  in  old  times  the  spoils  of  war  were  a  chief 
source  of  votive  offerings.     The   votive   offerings    of  the   Arabs 

^  Among  the  Arabs  a  sacrifice  {nacl'a)  preceded  the  division  of  the  spoil  ; 
see  below,  Additional  Note  N. 


NOTE   F. 


IX  ARABIA.  441 


frequently  consisted  of  weaj)ons  (Wellli.,  p.  110;  cf.  1  8ani.  xxi.  9); 
and,  among  the  Hebrews,  part  of  the  chief's  booty  was  generally 
consecrated  (Judg.  viii.  27;  2  Sam.  viii.  10  sq. ;  INIicah  iv.  13), 
Similarly,  Mesha  of  Moab  dedicates  part  of  his  spoil  to  Cheniosh  ; 
and  in  Greece  the  sacred  tithe  occurs  mainly  in  the  form  of  a 
percentage  on  the  spoils  of  war.  It  is  obvious,  however,  that  the 
apportionment  of  a  share  of  booty  to  the  chief  or  to  the  god  does 
not  properly  fall  under  the  category  of  tribute.  And  on  the 
general  Arabian  principle  that  a  chief  must  not  tax  his  own 
tribesmen,  it  does  not  appear  that  there  was  any  room  for  the 
development  of  a  system  of  sacred  dues,  so  long  as  the  gods  were 
tribal  deities  worshipped  only  by  their  own  tribe.  Among  the 
Arabs  tribute  is  a  jjayment  to  an  alii'u  tribe  or  to  its  chiefs, 
cither  by  way  of  black-mail,  or  in  return  for  protection.  A  king 
who  receives  gifts  and  tribute  is  a  king  reigning  over  subjects 
who  are  not  of  his  own  clan,  and  Avhom  therefore  he  is  not  bound 
to  help  and  protect  at  his  own  expense.  I  apprehend  that  the 
oldest  Hebrew  taxation  rested  on  this  principle  ;  for  even  Solomon 
seems  to  have  excluded  the  tribe  of  Judah  from  his  division  of 
the  kingdom  for  fiscal  purposes  (1  Kings  iv.  7  sqq.),  while  David, 
as  a  prosperous  warrior,  who  drew  vast  sums  from  conquered 
nations,  probably  raised  no  revenue  from  his  Israelite  subjects. 
As  regards  Saul,  we  know  nothing  more  than  that  he  enriched 
his  own  tribesmen  (1  Sam.  xxii.  7).  The  system  of  taxation 
described  in  1  Sam.  viii.  can  hardly  have  been  in  full  force  till 
the  time  of  Solomon  at  the  earliest,  and  its  details  seem  to 
indicate  that,  in  fiscal  as  in  other  matters,  the  developed  Hebrew 
kingship  took  a  lesson  from  its  neighbours  of  Phoenicia,  and 
possibly  of  Egypt. 

To  return,  however,  to  the  Arabs  :  the  tributes  which  chiefs 
and  kings  received  from  foreigners  were  partly  transit  dues  from 
traders  (Pliny,  H.  N.  xii.  63  sqq.).  In  such  tribute  the  gods  had 
their  share,  as  Pliny  expressly  relates  for  the  case  of  the  incense 
traffic,  and  as  Azraci  (p.  107)  appears  to  imply  for  the  case  of 
Greek  merchants  at  Mecca.  Commerce  and  religion  were  closely 
connected  in  all  the  Semitic  lands ;  the  greatest  and  richest 
temples  are  almost  always  found  at  cities  which  owed  their 
importance  to  trade. 

()i  the  other  kind  of  tribute,  paid  by  a  subject  tribe  to  a 
prince  of  alien  kin,  a  lively  picture  is  aflbrded  by  Agli.  x.  12, 
where  we  find  Zohair  b.  Jadhima  sitting  in  person  at  the  fair  of 


442  SACRED    TRIBUTE.  note  f. 

'Okaz  to  collect  from  the  Hawazin,  who  frequented  this  annual 
market,  their  gifts  of  ghee,  curds  and  small  cattle.  In  like  manner 
the  tribute  of  the  pastoral  IMoabites  to  the  kings  of  the  house  of 
'Omri  was  paid  in  sheep  (2  Kings  iii.  4) ;  and  on  such  analogies 
we  can  very  well  conceive  that  sacrificial  oblations  of  food  might 
be  regarded  as  tribute,  wherever  the  worshippers  were  not  the 
tribesmen  but  the  clients  of  their  god.  But  to  suppose  that 
sacrifices  generally  were  regarded  by  the  ancient  Semitic  nomads 
as  tributes  and  gifts  of  homage,  is  to  suppose  that  the  typical  form 
of  Semitic  religion  is  clientship,  a  position  which  is  altogether 
untenable. 

Thus  it  would  seem  that  all  we  know  of  the  social  institutions 
of  the  Arabs  is  in  complete  accordance  with  the  results,  obtained 
in  the  text  of  these  lectures,  with  regard  to  the  original  meaning  of 
sacrifice.  The  conclusion  to  which  the  ritual  points,  viz.  that  the 
sacrifice  was  in  no  sense  a  payment  to  the  god,  but  simply  an  act 
of  communion  of  the  worshippers  with  one  another  and  their 
god,  is  in  accord  with  the  relations  that  actually  subsisted  between 
chiefs  and  their  tribesmen ;  and  Avhen  we  read  that  in  the  time  of 
Mohammed  the  ordinary  worship  of  household  gods  consisted  in 
stroking  them  Avith  the  hand  as  one  went  out  and  in  (Muh.  in 
Med.  p.  360),  we  are  to  remember  that  reverent  salutation  was  all 
that,  ill  ordinary  circumstances,  a  great  chieftain  Avould  expect 
from  the  meanest  member  of  his  tribe.  At  the  pilgrimage  feasts 
of  the  Arabs,  as  of  the  Hebrews,  no  man  appeared  without  a 
gift ;  but  this  was  in  the  worship  of  alien  gods. 

In  a  payment  of  tribute  two  things  are  involved — (1)  a  transfer 
of  property,  and  (2)  an  obligation,  not  necessarily  to  pay  on  a 
lixed  scale,  but  at  least  to  pay  something.  That  an  Arabian 
sacrifice  cannot  without  straining  be  conceived  as  a  transfer  of 
property  has  appeared  in  the  course  of  this  note,  and  is  shown 
from  another  point  of  view  in  Lecture  XI.  (siqyra,  p.  371  sqq.).  And 
in  most  sacrifices  the  second  condition  is  also  imfulfilled,  for  in 
Arabia  it  is  left  to  a  man's  free  will  whether  he  will  appear  before 
the  god  and  do  sacrifice,  even  in  the  sacred  month  of  Rajab. 

It  seems,  however,  to  be  probable  that  the  absolute  freedom  of 
the  individual  will  in  matters  of  religious  duty,  as  it  appears 
among  the  Arabs  in  the  generations  immediately  preceding  Islam, 
was  in  part  due  to  the  breaking  up  of  the  old  religion.  There 
can,  for  example,  be  hardly  a  doubt  that  the  ascetic  observances 
during  a  war  of  blood-revenge,  which  in  the  time  of  the  prophet 


NOTK    F. 


FIRSTLINCS.  44:'. 


■were  assuineJ  by  a  voluntary  vow,  were  at  one  time  imperatively 

demanded  by  religions  custom  {infra.  Note  K).     Again,  there  were. 

certain  religious  restrictions  on  the  use  of  a  man's  ])roperty  which, 

even  in  later  times,  do  not  seem  to  have  been  purely  optional,  e.t/. 

the  prohibition   of   using  for  common  Avork  a  camel  -which  had 

l)roduced  ten  female  foals.     Ikit,  in  oldi-r  times  at  least,  such  a 

camel  was  not  given  over  in  property  to  the  god ;  the  restriction 

was  simply  a  tahoo  {siipra,  p.  139). 

There  is,  however,  one  Arabian  sacrilice  which  has  very  much 

the  aspect  of  a  fixed  due  payable  to  the  god,  viz.  the  sacrifice  of 

firstlings    (.   ;     fara).     It  has  already  been    remarked    {sttpra, 

IJ"'  ' 
\\.  210,  notL'  2)  that  the  accounts  which  have  been  handed  down 

to  us  about  the  f(ir(('  are  confused  and  uncertain  ;  but  although 

the  word  seems  to  have  been  extended  to  cover  other  customary 

.sacrifices,  it  appears  properly  to  denote  "the  foal  or  lamb  which  is 

first  cast."     This  is  the  definition  given  in  the  Jtadiih,  which  in 

such  matters  has  always  great  weight,  and  it  is  confirmed  by  the 

proverb  in  ^laidjlni,  ii.  20  (Freytag,  Ar.  Pr.  ii.  212).     As  we  also 

learn  from  the  had'tth  (Lisaii,  s.v.)  that  the  custom  was  to  sacrifice 

the  fara  when  it  was  still  so  young  that  the  flesh  was  like  ghu; 

:ind  stuck  to  the  skin,  it  would  seem  that  this  sacrifice  must  be 

connected  with  the  Hebrew  sacrifice  of  the  first-born  of  kine  and 

sheep,  which  according  to  the  oldest  law  (Ex.  xxii.   30)  was  to 

be  olfered  on  the  eighth  day  from  birth.     There  is  an  unfortunate 

ambiguity  about  the  definition  of  the  Arabian  fara,  for  the  first 

birth  may  mean  either  the  first  birth  of  the  dam,  or  the  first  birth 

of  the  year,  and  ^Maidfini  takes  it  in  the  latter  sense,  making  f am' 

a  synonym  of  roba\  i.e.  a  foal  which  being  born  in  the  rahl',  or 

season  of  abundant  grass,  when  the  mother  was  well  fed,  naturally 

grew  up  stronger  and  better  than  foals  born  later  (cf.  Gen.  iv.  4). 

Ihit   apart   from    the    analogy  of   the    Hebrew  firstlings,   which 

are  quite  unambiguously  explained   as    first-born    (nm  "lt2D,  Ex. 

xxxiv.  19),  there  are  other  uses  of  the  Arabic  word  fara'  which 

make  Maidani's  interpretation  improbable ;  and  the  presumption 

is  that,  however  the  rule  may  have  been  relaxed  or  modified  in 

later  times,  there  was  a  very  ancient  Semitic  custom,  anterior  to 

the  separation  of  the  Arabs  and  Hebrews,  of  sacrificing  the  first- 

l)orn  of  domestic  animals.     The  conclusion  that  this  offering  was, 

for    nomadic   life,  what   the    ofl'ering    of    first-fruits    was    among 

agricultural    peoples,  viz.  a   tribute   iiaid   to   the   gods,  seems  so 

obvious  that  it  re(][uires  some  courage  to  resist  it.     Yet,  from  what 


444  SACRIFICE    OF 


KOTE   F. 


has  been  already  said,  it  seems  absolutely  impossible  that,  at  the 
very  early  date  when  the  Hebrews  and  Arabs  lived  together,  any 
tribute  could  have  been  paid  to  the  god  as  chief  or  king ;  and, 
even  in  the  form  of  the  sacrifice  of  firstlings  which  is  found  among 
the  Hebrews,  there  seem  to  be  indications  that  the  parallelism 
with  the  oflFering  of  first-fruits  is  less  complete  than  at  first  sight 
it  seems  to  be. 

The  first-fruits  are  an  annual  gift  of  the  earliest  and  choicest 
fruits  of  the  year,  but  the  firstlings  are  the  first  ofi"spring  of  an 
animal.  Their  proper  parallel  in  tbe  vegetable  kingdom  is  there- 
fore found  in  the  law  of  Lev.  xix.  23  sqq.,  which  ordains  that  for 
three  years  the  fruit  of  a  new  orchard  shall  be  treated  as  "  uncir- 
cumcised,"  and  not  eaten,  that  the  fourth  year's  fruit  shall  be 
consecrated  to  Jehovah,  and  that  thereafter  the  fruit  shall  be 
common.  The  characteristic  feature  in  this  ordinance,  from  which 
its  original  meaning  must  be  deduced,  is  the  taboo  on  the  produce 
of  the  first  three  years,  not  the  offering  at  the  temple  paid  in  the 
fourth  year.  And  that  some  form  of  taboo  lies  also  at  the  bottom 
of  the  sacrifice  of  firstlings,  appears  from  the  provision  of  the  older 
Hebrew  laAV  that,  if  a  firstling  ass  is  not  redeemed  by  its  owner, 
its  neck  shall  be  broken  (Ex.  xxxiv.  20).  We  see,  however, 
that  the  tendency  was  to  bring  all  such  offerings  under  the 
category  of  sacred  tribute;  for  by  the  later  law  (Lev.  xxvii.  27) 
the  ass  that  is  not  redeemed  is  to  be  sold  for  the  benefit  of  the 
sanctuary,  and  even  in  the  older  law  all  the  first-born  of  men 
must  be  redeemed. 

Primarily,  a  thing  that  is  taboo  is  one  that  has  supernatural 
qualities  or  associations,  of  a  kind  that  forbid  it  to  be  nsed  for 
common  purposes.  This  is  all  that  is  involved,  under  the  older 
law,  in  the  holiness  of  the  firstling  ass ;  it  is  such  an  animal  as 
the  Arabs  would  have  allowed  to  go  free,  instead  of  killing  it. 
But  in  the  very  earliest  times  all  domestic  animals  had  a  certain 
measure  of  holiness,  and  were  protected  by  certain  taboos  which 
prevented  them  from  being  used  by  man  as  mere  chattels ;  and 
so  it  would  appear  that  the  holiness  of  the  first-born,  which  is 
congenital  (Lev.  xxvii.  26),  is  only  a  higher  form  of  the  original 
sanctity  of  domestic  animals.  The  correctness  of  this  conclusion 
can  be  verified  by  a  practical  test ;  for,  if  firstlings  are  animals  of 
special  intrinsic  holiness,  the  sacrifices  to  which  they  are  appropriate 
will  be  special  acts  of  communion,  piacular  holocausts  or  the  like, 
and  not  mere  common  sacrificial  meals.     And  this  is  actually  the 


NOTE  F.  FIRSTLINGS.  445 

case  in  the  oldest  Hebrew  times  ;  for  the  Passover,  -wliicli  is  the 
sacrifice  of  firsthngs  ^>ar  excellence,  is  an  atoning  rite  of  a  (juite 
oxccptifmal  kind  (supra,  p.  387).^ 

Furtlier,  tliere  is  a  close  connection  between  the  firsthngs  and 
the  piacuhxr  holocaust ;  both  are  limited  to  males,  and  the  holo- 
caust of  Samuel  (1  Sani.  vii.  9)  is  a  sucking  lamb,  while  from 
Ex.  XX.  30  we  see  that  firstlings  were  offered  on  the  eighth  day 
(or,  probably,  as  soon  after  it  as  was  practicable ;  cf.  Lev. 
xxii.  27). 

The  consecration  of  first -Ijorn  male  children  (Ex.  xiii.  13, 
xxii.  28,  xxxiv.  20)  has  always  created  a  difficulty.  The  legal 
usage  was  to  redeem  the  human  firstlings,  and  in  Numb.  iii.  this 
redemption  is  further  connected  in  a  very  complicated  way  with 
the  consecration  of  the  tribe  of  Levi.  It  appears,  however,  that 
in  the  period  immediately  before  the  exile,  when  sacrifices  of 
first-born  children  became  common,  these  grisly  ofl'erings  Avere 
supposed  to  fall  under  the  law  of  firstlings  (Jer.  vii.  31,  xix.  5  ; 
Ezek.  XX.  25).  To  conclude  from  this  that  at  une  time  the 
Hebrews  actually  sacrificed  all  their  first-born  sons  is  absurd  ; 
but,  on  the  other  hand,  there  must  have  been  some  point  of 
attachment  in  ancient  custom  for  the  belief  that  the  deity  asked 
for  such  a  sacrifice.  In  point  of  fact,  even  in  old  times,  when 
exceptional  circumstances  called  for  a  human  victim,  it  was  a 
child,  and  by  preference  a  first-born  or  only  child,  that  was 
selected  by  the  peoples  in  and  around  Palestine.-  This  is 
commonly  explained  as  the  most  costly  offering  a  man  can 
make ;  but  it  is  rather  to  be  regarded  as  the  choice  for  a  special 
purpose  of  the  most  sacred  kind  of  victim.  I  apprehend  that 
all  the  prerogatives  of  the  first-born  among  Semitic  peoj)les  are 
originally  prerogatives  of  sanctity ;  the  sacred  blood  of  the  kin 
flows  purest  and  strongest  in  him  (Gen.  xlix.  3).  Neither  in 
the  case  of  children,  nor  in   that  of  cattle,  did  the  congenital 

^  That  the  paschal  sacrifice  was  originally  a  sacrifice  of  firstlings  is  clearly 
brought  out  by  Wellhausen,  Prolagomena,  fli.  iii.  §  1,  1.  Ultimately  tlic 
paschal  lamb  and  the  firstlings  fell  ajjart ;  the  former  was  retained,  witli 
much  of  its  old  and  characteristic  ritual,  as  a  domestic  sacrifice,  while  tlie 
latter  continued  to  be  presented  at  the  sanctuary  and  offered  on  the  altar, 
the  whole  flesh  being  the  perquisite  of  the  priest  (Num.  xviii.  18).  But  in 
the  law  of  Deuteronomy  (xii.  17  sqq.,  xv.  19  sqq.)i[\c  firstlings  have  not  yet 
assumed  the  character  of  a  sacred  tribute. 

-■2  Kings  iii.  27;  Philo  Byblius  in  Fr.  Hist.  Gr.  iii.  ful  ;   cf.   Porph., 

De  Abut.  ii.   56,   tut  (fikraTeu*  md. 


446  FIRST-BORN.  note  g. 


holiness  of  the  first-born  originally  imply  that  they  must  be 
sacrificed,  or  given  to  the  deity  on  the  altar,  but  only  that  if 
sacrifice  was  to  be  made  they  were  the  best  and  fittest,  because 
the  holiest,  victims.  But  when  the  old  ideas  of  holiness  became 
unintelligible,  and  holy  beasts  came  to  mean  beasts  set  aside  for 
sacrifice,  an  obvious  extension  of  this  new  view  of  holiness 
demanded  that  the  human  first-born  should  be  redeemed,  by 
the  substitution  of  an  animal  victim  (Gen.  xxii.)  ;  and  from  this 
usage  again  the  Moloch  sacrifices  were  easily  developed  in  the 
seventh  century,  when  ordinary  means  seemed  too  weak  to  conjure 
the  divine  anger. 

In  the  Passover  we  find  the  sacrifice  of  firstlings  assuming  the 
form  of  an  annual  feast,  in  the  spring  season.  Such  a  combina- 
tion is  possible  only  when  the  yeaning  time  falls  in  spring.  So 
far  as  sheep  are  concerned,  there  Avere  two  lambing  times  in 
ancient  Italy,  some  sheep  yeaning  in  spring,  others  in  autumn, 
and  the  latter  were  the  goodlier  and  stronger,  according  to  Eoman 
writers  on  agriculture.  That  the  same  thing  was  true  of  Palestine 
may  perhaps  be  inferred  from  the  old  versions  of  Gen.  xxx.  41, 
42.^  But  in  Arabia  all  cattle,  small  and  great,  yean  in  the  season 
of  the  spring  pasture,  so  that  here  we  have  the  necessary  condi- 
tion for  a  spring  sacrifice  of  firstlings,^  and  also  a  reason,  more 
conclusive  than  the  assertion  of  the  Lisan  (■■nqjra,  p.  210),  for 
identifying  the  Arabian  Kajab  sacrifices  with  the  sacrifice  of 
firstlings. 


ADDITIONAL  NOTE  G  (p.  276). 

SACRIFICES    OF    SACRED    ANIMALS. 

In  the  text  I  have  spoken  only  of  animals  corresponding  to 
Julian's  definition  of  the  creatures  suited  for  mystical  piacula, 
viz.  that  they  were  such  as  were  ordinarily  excluded  from 
human  diet.       But  there   are   other   animals  which,  though   not 

1  Not  from  the  text  itself ;  cf.  Bochart,  Purs  I.  Lib.  ii.  cap.  46.  Much  of 
wliat  is  said  in  recent  commentaries  on  these  verses  is  nonsense  ;  taken 
from  Bochart  at  second  hand  and  spoiled  in  the  taking. 

'■^  Doughty,  Arabia  Deserta,  i.  429. 


NOTE   G. 


SACRED    ANIMALS.  447 


strictly  forbidden  food  in  the  times  of  which  we  have  record, 
retained  a  certain  reputation  of  natural  hohncss,  -whicli  gave  thoni 
a  peculiar  virtue  when  used  in  sacrifice.  Of  course,  when  the 
sacredness  of  an  animal  species  ceases  to  be  marked  by  the 
definite  taboos  that  we  tind  in  the  case  of  the  swine,  the  dog, 
or  the  dove,  the  proof  that  it  was  once  held  to  be  holy  in  a 
particular  religious  circle  becomes  dependent  on  circumstantial 
evidence,  and  more  or  less  vague.  lUit  it  seems  worth  while  to 
cite  one  or  two  examples  in  which  the  point  can  be  fairly  well 
made  out,  or  at  least  made  sufficiently  probable  to  deserve  further 
examination. 

1.  Deer  and  antelopes  of  various  kinds  were  sacred  animals 
in  several  parts  of  the  Semitic  field;  see  Kinship,  p.  194  sq. 
They  were  not  indecLl  forbidden  food,  but  they  had  special 
relations  to  various  deities.  Troops  of  sacred  gazelles  occur  down 
to  a  late  date  at  sanctuaries,  e.g.  at  Mecca  and  Tabtila  (Wellli.,  p. 
102),  and  in  the  island  spoken  of  by  Arrian,  vii.  20.  Moreover 
stags  or  gazelles  occur  as  sacred  symbols  in  South  Arabia,  in 
connection  with  'Athtar-worship  ;  at  Mecca,  probably  in  connec- 
tion with  the  worship  of  Al-'Ozza,  and  in  Phoenicia,  both  on  gems 
and  on  coins  of  Laodicea  ad  Mare.  Further,  Ibn  INIojiiwir  speaks 
of  a  South  Arab  tribe  which,  Avhen  a  gazelle  was  found  dead, 
solemnly  buried  it  and  mourned  for  seven  days. 

No  kind  of  wild  quadruped  was  an  ordinary  sacrificial  animal 
among  the  Semites,  and  even  the  Arabs  regard  a  gazelle  as  a  mean 
substitute  for  a  sheep ;  but  in  certain  rituals  we  find  the  stag  or 
gazelle  as  an  exceptional  sacrifice.  The  most  notable  case  is  the 
annual  stas:  sacrifice  at  Laodicea  on  the  Phoenician  coast,  Avhich 
was  regarded  as  a  substitute  for  a  more  ancient  sacrifice  of  a 
maiden,  and  wuis  ofl'ered  to  a  goddess  whom  Porphyry  calls 
Athena  {De  Ahst.  ii.  50),  while  Pausanias  (iii.  IG.  8)  identifies 
her  with  the  Brauronian  Artemi.s,  and  supposes  that  the  cult  was 
introduced  by  Seleucus.  Put  the  town  (Ramitha  in  Phoenician, 
according  to  Philo  ap.  Steph.  Byz.)  is  much  older  than  its  re- 
christening  by  Seleucus,  and,  if  the  goddess  had  really  been 
Greek,  she  would  not  have  been  identified  with  Athena  as  well 
as  with  Artemis.  She  was,  in  fact,  a  form  of  Astarte,  tlie  ancient 
Tyche  of  the  city,  who,  according  to  the  usual  manner  of  the 
later  euhomeristic  Syrians,  Avas  supposed  to  have  been  a  virgin, 
immolated  when  the  city  was  founded,  and  thereafter  worshipped 
as  a  deity  (Malalas,  p.  203).     Here,  therefore,  we  have  one  of  the 


o 


448  USOUS.  NOTE  G. 

many  legends  of  the  death  of  a  deity  which  are  grafted  on  a  rite 
of  annual  human  sacrifice ;  or  on  the  annual  sacrifice  of  a  sacred 
animal,  under  circumstances  that  showed  its  life  to  be  taken  as 
having  the  value  of  a  human  life  on  the  one  hand,  or  of  the 
life  of  the  deity  on  the  other.  The  stag,  whose  death  has  such 
significance,  is  a  theanthropic  victim,  exactly  as  in  the  mystic 
sacrifices  discussed  in  the  text. 

Of  the  stag  or  gazelle  as  a  Phcenician  sacrifice  Ave  have  further 
evidence  from  Philo  Byblius  (Pr.  Ev.  i.  10.  10)  in  the  legend  of 
the  god  Usous,  who  first  taught  men  to  clothe  themselves  in  the 
skins  of  beasts  taken  in  hunting,  and  to  pour  out  their  blood 
sacrificially  before  sacred  stones.  This  god  Avas  Avorshipped  at 
the  sanctuary  he  instituted,  at  an  annual  feast,  and  doubtless 
Avith  the  ceremonies  he  himself  devised,  i.e.  Avith  libations  of  the 
blood  of  a  deer  or  antelope — for  these  are  the  important  kinds  of 
game  in  the  district  of  the  Lebanon — presented  by  Avorshippers 
clad  in  deer-skins.  The  wearing  of  the  skin  of  the  victim,  as  Ave 
have  seen  at  p.  417,  is  characteristic  of  mystical  and  piacular  rites. 
Most  scholars,  from  Scaliger  doAvnAvards,  have  compared  Usous 
Avith  Esau ;  but  it  has  not  been  observed  that  the  scene  of  Isaac's 
blessing,  Avhere  his  son  must  first  approach  him  Avith  the  savoury 
flesh  of  a  gazelle,  has  all  the  air  of  a  sacrificial  scene.  Moreover, 
Jacob,  Avho  substitutes  kids  for  gazelles,  Avears  their  skin  upon 
his  arms  and  neck.  The  goat,  Avhich  here  appears  as  a  substitute 
for  the  game  offered  by  the  huntsman  Esau,  Avas  one  of  the  chief 
HebrcAv  piacula,  if  not  the  chief  of  all.  In  Babylonia  and  Assyria 
also  it  has  an  exceptional  place  among  sacrifices ;  see  the  repre- 
sentation in  Menant,  Glyptique,  vol.  i.  p.  146  sqq.,  vol.  ii.  p.  68. 
What  is  obsolete  in  common  life  often  survives  in  poetic  phrase 
and  metaphor,  and  I  am  tempted  to  see  in  the  opening  Avords  of 
David's  dirge  on  Saul  ("  The  gazelle,  0  Israel,  is  slain  on  thy  high 
places,"  2  Sam.  i.  19)  an  allusion  to  some  ancient  sacrifice  of 
similar  type  to  that  Avhich  survived  at  Laodicea. 

2.  The  Avild  ass  Avas  eaten  by  the  Arabs,  and  must  have  been 
eaten  Avith  a  religious  intention,  since  its  flesh  was  forbidden  to 
his  converts  by  Symeon  the  Stylite.  Conversely,  among  the 
Harranians  the  ass  Avas  forbidden  food,  like  the  SAvine  and  the 
do'^'' ;  but  there  is  no  evidence  that,  like  these  animals,  it  Avas 
sacrificed  or  eaten  in  exceptional  mysteries.  Yet  Avhen  we 
find  one  section  of  Semites  forbidden  to  eat  the  ass,  Avhile 
another  section  eats   it  in   a  way  Avhich   to   Christians  appears 


NOTE  G. 


SACRED    ANIMALS.  449 


idolatrous,  the  presumption  that  the  animal  was  anciently  sacred 
becomes  very  strong.  An  actual  ass-sacri(ice  appears  in  Egypt 
in  the  worship  of  Typhon  (Set  or  Sutecli),  who  was  the  chief 
god  of  the  Semites  in  Egypt,  though  Egyptologists  doubt  whether 
he  was  originally  a  Semitic  god.  The  ass  was  a  Typhonic  animal, 
and  in  certain  religious  ceremonies  the  people  of  Coptus  sacrificed 
asses  by  casting  them  down  a  precipice,  while  those  of  Lycopolis, 
in  two  of  their  annual  feasts,  stamped  the  figure  of  a  bound  ass 
on  their  sacrificial  cakes  (Plut.,  Is.  et  Os.  §  30);  see,  for  the 
meaning  of  these  cakes,  supra,  pp.  208,  note  3,  222,  note  1 ;  and 
for  sacrifice  by  casting  from  a  precipice,  supi'a,  pp.  355,  397.  Both 
forms  indicate  a  mystic  or  piacular  rite,  and  stand  on  one  line 
with  the  holocausts  of  living  men  to  Typhon  mentioned  by 
Manctho  (ihid.  §  73).  If  it  could  be  made  out  that  these  rites 
were  really  of  Semitic  origin,  the  ass  would  be  a  clear  case  of 
an  ancient  mystic  piaculum  within  our  field  ;  but  meantime  the 
matter  must  rest  doubtful.  It  may,  however,  be  noted  tha.t  the  old 
clan-name  Hamor  (  "  he-ass  ")  among  the  Canaanites  in  Sliechem, 
seems  to  confirm  the  view  that  the  ass  was  sacred  with  some  of  the 
Semites;  and  the  fables  of  ass-worsliip  among  the  Jews  (on 
which  compare  Bochart,  Hicrozoicon,  Pars  I.  Lib.  ii.  cap.  18) 
probably  took  their  rise,  like  so  many  other  false  statements 
of  a  similar  kind,  in  a  confusion  between  the  Jews  and  their 
heathen  neighbours.  As  regards  the  eating  of  wild  asses'  flesh 
b.y  the  Arabs,  I  have  not  found  evidence  in  Arabic  literature 
that  in  the  times  before  ^Mohammed  it  had  any  religious 
meaning,  though  Cazwlni  tells  us  that  its  flesh  and  hoofs  supplied 
j)owerful  charms,  and  this  is  generally  a  relic  of  sacrificial  use. 
See  also  supra,  p.  408,  note.  On  the  religious  associations  of  the 
ass  in  classical  antiquity,  and  the  use  of  the  ass's  head  as  a  charm, 
see  Compte  Rendu,  de  la  Corn.  Imp.  Arch,  pour  1863,  p.  228  sq., 
and  Berichte  of  the  Saxon  Society  of  Sciences,  1854,  p.  48. 

It  has  been  supposed  that  the  "golden"  Set,  worshipped  by  the 
Semitic  Hyksos  in  the  Delta,  was  a  Sun-god  (E.  Meyer,  Gesch.  des 
Alt.  p.  135).  If  this  be  so,  the  horses  of  the  sun  may  have 
succeeded  to  the  older  sanctity  of  the  ass ;  for  the  ass  is  much 
more  ancient  than  the  horse  in  the  Semitic  lands. 

3.  To  these  two  examples  of  sacred  quadrupeds  I  am  inclined 
to  add  one  of  a  sacred  bird.  The  quail  sacrifice  of  the  Phoenicians 
is  said  by  Eudoxus  {ap.  Athen.,  ix.  47)  to  commemorate  the 
resurrection  of   Heracles.     But   this  was  an  annual  festival  at 

2f 


450  QUAIL   SACRIFICE.  kote  h. 

Tyre,  in  the  month  Peritiiis  (February — March),  i.e.  just  at  the 
time  when  the  quail  returns  to  Palestine,  immense  crowds 
appearing  in  a  single  night  (Jos.,  Ant.  viii.  5.  3,  compared  with 
Tristram,  Fauna,  p.  124).  An  annual  sacrifice  of  this  sort, 
connected  with  a  myth  of  the  death  of  the  god,  can  hardly  be  other 
than  the  mystical  sacrifice  of  a  sacred  animal;  and  it  is  to  be 
noted  that  the  ancients  regard  quail's  flesh  as  dangerous  food, 
producing  vertigo  and  tetanus,  while  on  the  other  hand  an 
ointment  made  from  the  brain  is  a  cure  for  epilepsy  (Bochart,  II. 
i.  15).     Lagarde  {Gr.   Uehers.  der  Prow.  p.  81)  once  proposed  to 

connect  the  Arabic      3\^^.   "  quail,"  with  the  god  Eshmun-Iolaos, 

Avho  restored  Heracles  to  life  by  giving  him  a  quail  to  smell  at ; 
if  this  be  right,  the  god-name  must  be  derived  from  that  of  the 

bird,  and  not  vice  versa.    If  the  other  name  for  the  quail,       \^ 

salwd  (in  spite  of  Heb.  V?^),  is  from  a  root  meaning  to  forget 
(Lagarde,  Nomina,  p.  190),  it  may  be  connected  with  the  idea  that 
the  quail  feeds  on  hellebore,  and  that  its  flesh  produces  vertigo. 
Is  this  why  it  is  sacrificially  eaten  in  connection  with  the  death 
of  the  god  1  Is  it  in  fact  a  solwdn,  or  means  of  forgetting  grief 
in  an  act  of  communion  with  the  dead  ? 


ADDITIONAL  NOTE  H  (p.  292). 

THE    SACRIFICE    OF    A    SHEEP    TO    THE    CYPRIAN    APHRODITE. 

Instead  of  a  note  on  this  subject,  I  here  print  a  paper  read 
before  the  Cambridge  Philological  Society  in  1888,  of  which 
only  a  brief  abstract  has  hitherto  been  published  : — 

The  peculiar  rite  which  forms  the  subject  of  the  present  paper 
is  known  to  us  from  a  passage  in  Joannes  Lydus,  De  Mensihus., 
iv.  45,  which  has  been  often  referred  to  by  writers  on  ancient 
religion,  but,  so  far  as  my  reading  goes,  Avithout  any  notice  being 
taken  of  a  most  serious  difficulty,  which  it  seems  impossible  to 
overcome  without  a  change  of  the  text.  Lydus  in  the  chapter  in 
question  begins  by  describing  the  practices  by  which  women  of 
the  higher  and  lower  classes  respectively  did  honour  to  Venus  on 
the  Calends  of  April.     Here,  of  course,  he  is  speaking  of  Roman 


NOTE  H.  CYPRIAN    APHRODITE.  451 

iisage,  as  is  plain  from  the  general  plan  of  his  book  and  from  the 
ceremonies  he  specifies.     The  honourahle  women  did  service  to 
Venns  v-n-ep  o^ovotas   kol  (3iov  (rw(/)poi/os.     This  agrees  with  the 
worship  of   Yenns  verficurJia,   the   patroness  of    female  virtue, 
whose  worship  Ovid  connects  with  the  Calends  of  April  {Fasti, 
iv.  155  sq.),  and  Mommsen  conjectures  to  have  been  mentioned 
under  that  day  in  the  FasH  Pram.     Again,  Lydus  says  that  the 
women  of  the  common  sort  bathed  in  the  men's  baths,  crowned 
with  myrtle,  \vhich    agrees  with  Ovid  (ibid.   139  wy.),  Plutarch 
(Nunia,  c.   19),  and  the  service  of  Fortuna  virilis  in  the  Fast. 
Prain.      The   transition  from  this  Koman  worship  of  Venus  to 
the  Cyprian  ritual  of  the  same  day,  is  made  by  a  remark  as  to 
tlie  victims  proper  to  the  goddess.     Venus,  he  says,  was  wor- 
shipped with  the  same  sacrifices  as  Juno,  but  in  Cyprus  npoftaTov 
KcoSto)  e(TK£7ra(Tyu,et'or  avveOvov  rrj  ^AcfipoSirr)'  6  Se  rpoTros  rrjs  Uparcia? 
iv  TJj  KvTrpo)  aTTO  tt/s   Kopu'Oov  -rraprjXOe  ttotc.      As  Lydus  goes  on 
to  say  that  thereafter  (ctra  Be),  on  the  second  of  April,  they  sacrificed 
wild  boars  to  the  goddess,  on  account  of  the  attack  of  that  animal 
on  Adonis,  it  is  clear  that  the  sacrifice  of  a  sheep  took  place  on 
the  first  of  April,  and  that  Engel  {Kypros,  ii.  155)  entirely  over- 
looks the  context  when  he  says  that,  according  to  Lydus,  the 
ordinary  sacrifices  of  Aphrodite  were  the  same  as  those  of  Hera, 
but  that  in  Cyprus  a  favourite  sacrifice  to  the  former  goddess  was 
a  sheep  with  a  woolly  fleece,     Lydus  does  not  say  that  a  sheep 
was  a  favourite  Cyprian  sacrifice  to  Aphrodite,  but  that  it  was 
the  sacrifice  appropriated  to  the  first  of  April.     The  very  point  of 
the  passage  is  that  the  Roman  feast  of  the  first  of  April  appears 
in  Cyprus  with  variations  in  detail. 

This  coincidence  cannot  be  accidental,  and  the  explanation  is 
not  far  to  seek.  The  Cyprian  Aphrodite  is  the  Semitic  Astarte, 
and  her  ritual  is  throughout  marked  with  a  Semitic  stamp.  It  is 
to  Semitic  ritual,  therefore,  that  we  must  look  for  the  origin  of 
the  April  feast.  Now,  among  the  Syrians  Nisan  is  the  month 
corresponding  to  April,  and  on  the  first  three  days  of  Nisan,  as 
Ave  learn  from  the  Fihrist,  the  Syrians  of  Ilarran,  who  clung  to 
the  ancient  Astarte-worship  far  into  the  Middle  Ages,  visited  the 
temple  of  the  goddess  in  groups  (Lydus's  (rvvWvov),  offered  sacri- 
fices, and  burned  living  animals.  The  burning  of  living  animals 
answers  to  the  ceremonies  observed  at  Ilierapolis  in  the  great 
feast  of  the  Syrian  goddess  at  the  incoming  of  spring,  when,  as 
we  read  in  Lucian,  goats,  sheep  and  other  living  creatures  were 


452  SACRIFICES   OF   THE  note  h. 


suspended  on  a  pyre,  and  the  whole  was  consumed.  The  feast, 
therefore,  is  an  annual  spring  feast  of  Semitic  origin.  The  Eoman 
observance  was  less  solemn,  and  of  a  popular  kind  rather  than 
part  of  the  State  religion.  Macrobius  (Sat.  i.  12.  12-15)  tells  us, 
indeed,  that  at  Rome  this  festival  was  not  ancient,  but  was  intro- 
duced for  an  historical  reason  which  he  omits  to  record.  Now,  a 
new  ritual  at  Rome  was  almost  certainly  a  borrowed  one,  and 
there  is  ample  evidence  (for  which  it  is  enough  to  refer  to 
Preller's  Roviisclie  Mijthologie)  that  the  most  influential  centre  of 
Venus-worship  in  the  West,  and  that  which  had  most  to  do  with 
the  development  of  her  cult  in  Italy,  was  the  great  temple  at 
Eryx,  the  "["iK  of  the  Carthaginians.  From  Phoenician  inscrip- 
tions it  is  certain  that  the  goddess  of  Eryx  ("]"IX  mntJ'y,  C.  I.  S. 
No.  140,  cf.  No.  135)  was  Astarte;  and  thus  it  is  easily  under- 
stood that  the  Asiatic  festival  found  its  way  to  Rome.  A  festival 
so  widespread,  and  one  which  held  its  ground  so  long,  is  well 
worthy  of  careful  examination. 

When  Lydus,  in  passing  from  the  Roman  to  the  Cyprian  rite, 
says  €Tt/xaTo  Se  yj  'A<^/3oStT7y  rots  awrois  ois  koX  tj  "Hpa,  I  cannot 
find  with  Engel  that  he  makes  any  general  statement  that,  as  a 
rule,  the  same  sacrifices  were  appropriate  to  Venus  and  to  Juno. 
Oriental  worships  allowed  a  far  greater  range  in  the  choice  of 
victims  for  a  single  deity  or  temple  than  was  customary  in  Greece 
or  Rome.  For  the  Carthaginian  temples  of  Baal  this  appears 
from  extant  inscriptions  ;  and  as  regards  Astarte-Aphrodite,  Tacitus 
[Hist.  iii.  2)  tells  us  that  at  Paphos,  and  yElian  {Nat.  An.  x.  50) 
that  at  Eryx,  the  worshipper  chose  any  kind  of  sacrifice  he  pleased. 
This  liberty,  which  was  evidently  surprising  to  the  Romans  and 
the  Greeks,  was  probably  due  to  the  syncretism  which  established 
itself  at  an  early  date  at  all  the  great  Semitic  sanctuaries ;  one 
deity,  as  we  see  in  the  case  of  Hierapolis,  combining  a  number  of 
characters  which  originally  belonged  to  difi'erent  gods,  and  uniting 
at  a  single  temple  a  corresponding  variety  of  ancient  rituals. 
Such  syncretism  was  probably  very  ancient  among  the  cosmo- 
politan Phoenicians ;  and  throughout  the  Semitic  world  it  received 
a  great  impulse  by  the  breaking  up  of  the  old  small  states  through 
Assyrian,  Babylonian  and  Persian  conquests.  The  political  and 
religious  cosmopolitanism  of  the  East  under  the  Macedonians 
rested  on  a  basis  which  had  been  prepared  centuries  before. 

In  the  West  no  such  powerful  political  agencies  were  at  work 
to  develop  an  early  tendency  to  syncretism,  nor  was  it  so  easy  to 


NOTE  II.  CYPRIAN    APHRODITE.  453 

confound  the  well-marked  individualities  of  the  Western  Pantheon 
as  to  combine  the  hazy  personalities  of  difrorent  Baals  or  Astartes. 
AVhen  the  need  for  cosmopolitan  forms  of  worship  arose,  Eastern 
gods  and  rituals  were  borrowed,  as  in  the  case  of  Sarapis ;  and 
the  old  acknowledged  worships  still  retained  their  individual 
peculiarities.  It  is  known  that  neither  Juno  nor  Hera  admitted 
such  a  free  choice  of  victims  for  her  shrine  as  was  permitted  at 
Eryx  and  Paphos.  Their  ordinary  sacrifice  was  a  cow ;  for,  like 
other  goddesses,  they  preferred  victims  of  their  own  sex  (Arnobius, 
vii.  19).  But,  so  far  as  the  Oriental  Aphrodite  had  a  i)reference, 
it  was  for  male  victims.  So  Tacitus  tells  us  for  Paphos,  and 
Plautus  also  in  the  Poenulus  has  "  sex  agnos  immolavi  Veneri." 
This  preference  was  presumably  connected  with  the  androgynous 
character  ascribed  to  the  Eastern  goddess  in  Cyprus  and  else- 
where, and  of  itself  is  sufficient  to  separate  her  sacrifices,  as  a 
whole,  from  those  of  Juno  and  Hera.^  Besides,  the  favourite 
victim  of  Aphrodite  was  the  goat  (Tac,  Hist.  iii.  2),  which,  except 
at  Sparta  (Pausanias,  iii.  15.  9)  and  in  the  annual  piacular  sacrifice 
of  Hera  Acrsea  at  Corinth  (Hesychius,  s.v.  aX^  alya ;  Zenobius 
on  the  same  proverb;  Schol.  on  Eurip.,  Medea),  was  excluded  from 
the  altars  of  Hera.  Juno  has  relations  to  the  goat  at  Lanuvium, 
but  at  Rome  her  cultus  was  closely  related  to  that  of  Jupiter, 
from  whose  offerings  the  goat  was  strictly  excluded  (Arnobius, 
vii.  21). 

I  have  perhaps  spent  too  much  time  on  this  argument,  for 
surely  the  context  itself  is  sufficient  to  show  that  Lydus  is  not 
speaking  of  Venus-worship  in  general.  What  he  says  is  that  on 
the  Calends  of  April — a  special  occasion — Venus  was  worshipped 
at  Rome  with  the  sacrifices  of  Juno.  And  as  he  is  speaking  of  a 
ritual  in  which  the  worshippers  were  women,  I  think  we  may  go 
a  step  further  and  recall  the  fact  that  the  Calends  of  every  month 
were  sacred  to  Juno  Lucina,  to  whom  on  that  day  the  regina 
faeronim  offered  in  the  Regia  a  sow  or  ewe-lamb  (Macrob.,  i.  15.  19). 
The  functions  of  Lucina,  as  the  patroness  of  virtuous  matrons  and 
the  family  life  of  women,  were  so  nearly  identical  with  those  of 
A'enus  verticwdia  that  their  sacrifices  might  well  be  the  same. 
And  if  this  be  so,  it  was  natural  for  Lydus  to  pass  on  as  he  does 
to  a  remark  on  the  Cyprian  ritual,  where  the  same  sacrifices  occur 
with  characteristic  variations.     The  sex  of  the  victims  is  different, 

'  The  preference  for  male  victims  seems  however  to  have  other  connectious 
also  ;  see  p.  280,  supra. 


454  SHEEP   SACRIFICE   TO  note  h. 


for  a  reason  already  explained,  and  the  sacrifices  are  divided 
between  two  days.  But  the  victims  are  still  the  sheep  and  the 
pig,  so  that  the  fundamental  identity  of  the  Roman  and  the 
Eastern  service  of  the  day  receives  fresh  confirmation. 

So  far  all  is  plain ;  but  now  we  come  to  the  unsolved  difficulty. 
It  lies  in  the  phrase  irpofiarov  kwSi'o)  icrKCTracrixevov.  These  words 
describe  the  characteristic  peculiarity,  for  the  sake  of  which  our 
author  turns  aside  to  mention  the  Cyprian  rite,  and  it  seems  to 
be  in  relation  to  this  feature  that  he  observes  that  "  the  manner 
of  the  priestly  service  "  was  derived  from  Corinth.  Unfortunately 
we  know  nothing  of  the  Corinthian  ritual  referred  to.  The 
Corinthian  Aphrodite-worship  was  Oriental  in  type,  and  any 
feature  in  it  Avhich  reappears  at  Cyprus  is  almost  certainly 
Phoenician.  That  Cyprus  borrowed  from  Corinth  is  far  less 
likely  than  that  both  borrowed  from  the  East,  and  the  authority 
of  Lydus  is  not  enough  to  outweigh  this  probability.  The 
allusion  to  Corinth,  however,  is  of  value  as  teaching  us  that  the 
peculiar  rite  was  not  merely  local ;  and,  further,  the  allusion  to 
"  priestly  service  "  shows  that  the  sacrifice  in  question — as  indeed 
is  implied  in  the  word  awiOvov — was  not  a  private  offering,  but  a 
public  rite  performed  at  a  great  temple.  But  this  does  not  explain 
the  words  KwStw  ecr/ceTracr/AeVov.  It  is  plain  that  the  meaning 
cannot  be  "  a  sheep  with  a  woolly  fleece,"  as  Engel  renders,  nor 
does  it  seem  possible  to  understand  with  the  Due  de  Liiynes 
{Num.  et  Insc.  Cypr.  p.  6),  "un  b61ier  convert  de  toute  sa 
toison."  If  the  words  could  bear  this  meaning,  the  rendering 
would  be  plausible  enough,  for  we  have  seen  that  in  the  Syrian 
form  of  the  festival  the  victims  were  given  to  the  flames  alive. 
But  if  Lydus  had  meant  that  the  victim  was  consumed  by  fire, 
skin  and  all,  he  would  have  given  kcoSiw  the  article,  and  would 
have  used  a  more  precise  word  than  (rvviOvov.  And  can  KcoStov 
be  used  of  the  sheep-skin  on  the  sheep,  or  io-KeTraa/xevov  of  the 
natural  coat  1  The  plain  sense  of  the  words  is  that  the  sheep  was 
wrapped  in  a  sheep-skin  when  it  was  presented  for  sacrifice,  not 
that  its  skin  was  left  upon  it,  or  wrapped  round  the  sacrificial 
flesh  before  it  was  laid  on  the  altar. 

If  the  skin  had  been  that  of  a  different  kind  of  animal,  we 
might  have  explained  the  rite  by  the  same  principle  of  make- 
believe  which  we  find  in  the  Roman  offering  of  the  cervaria  ovis, 
the  sheep  that  was  made  to  pass  for  a  stag ;  for  the  ordinary 
meaning  of  skin-wearing  in  early  religion  is  to  simulate  identifica- 


NOTE  H.  THE    CYPRIAN    APHRODITE.  455 


tion  with  the  animal  whose  skin  is  worn.  But  to  wrap  a  sheep 
in  a  sheep-skin  is  like  gikling  gokk  I  propose  therefore  to  change 
a  single  letter,  and  read  eo-KCTracr/AcVot,  a  change  which  produces  a 
sense  good  in  itself  and  strongly  recommended  by  the  context  and 
by  analogy. 

The  significance  of  the  KwStov  or  sheep-skin  in  ancient  ritual  has 
been  illustrated  by  Lobeck  in  his  AijlaoplHunus,  and  by  Preller  in 
his  commentary  on  Polemo.     It  always  appears  in  connection  with 
atoning  and  mystic  rites,  and  in  the  majority  of  Greek  examples 
the  practice  appears  to  have  been  that  the  person  to  be  purged  of 
guilt  set  his  feet,  or  his  left  foot,  upon  the  skin  of  a  sacriiiced 
ram.     But  this  was  not  the  only  way  of  using  the  Kwhov.     In 
Thessaly  there  was,  according  to  Diccearchus,  a  ceremony,  observed 
at  the  greatest  heat  of  summer,  in  which  the  worshippers  ascended 
Mount  Pelion  to  the  temple  of  Zeus  Acraeus,  clad  in  new  sheep- 
skins {Fr.  Hist.  Gr.  ii.  262).     When  Pythagoras  was  purified  by 
the  priests  of  Morgus  in  Crete,  he  was  made  to  lie  beside  water 
(the  sea  by  day,  the  river  by  night),  wrapped  in  the  fleece  of  a 
black   lamb,  and  descended  to  the  tomb  of  Zeus  clad  in  black 
wool  (Porph.,  Vita  Pyth.  §  17).     Again,  the  first  sacrifice  of  every 
worshipper  at  Hierajiolis  was  a  sheep.     Having  partaken  of  the 
flesh,  the  sacrificer  laid  the  skin  on  the  ground,  and  knelt  on  it, 
taking  up  the  feet  and  head  over  his  own  head.     In  this  posture 
he  besought  the  deity  to  accept  his  offering.     Here  it  is  evident 
that  the  ceremony  expresses  the  identification  of  the  sacrificer 
with  the  victim.     He  has  taken  its  flesh  into  his  body,  and  he 
covers  himself  with  its  skin.     It  is,  as  it  were,  the  idea  of  sul)- 
stitution  turned  outside  in.     The  direct  symbolism  of  vicarious 
sacrifice,  where  an  animal's  life  is  accepted  in  place  of  the  life  of 
a  human  being,  is  to  treat  the  victim  as  if  it  were  a  man.     At 
Tenedos,  for  example,  the  bull-calf  sacrificed  to  Bacchus  wears  the 
cothurnus,  and  the  mother  cow  is  treated  like  a  woman  in  child- 
bed.    But   in  our  case  the  symbolism  is  inverted ;    instead  of 
making  believe  that  the  victim  is  a  man,  the  ritual  makes  believe 
that  the  man  is  the  victim,  and  so  brings  the  atoning  force  of  the 
sacrifice  into  immediate  application  to  him. 

It  is  evident  that  if  this  kind  of  symbolism  be  applied,  not  to 
purification  of  an  individual,  but  to  a  general  and  public  atoning 
service,  the  priests,  as  the  representatives  of  the  community  on 
whose  behalf  the  rite  is  performed,  are  the  persons  to  whom  the 
skin  of  the  victim  must  be  applied.     And   if  there  are  many 


456  ATONING   SACRIFICE 


NOTE  H. 


priests  and  only  one  victim,  it  will  be  convenient  not  to  use  the 
actual  skin  of  the  sacrifice,  which  only  one  can  wear  at  a  time, 
but  to  clothe  all  the  ministers  in  skins  of  the  same  kind.  This, 
according  to  my  conjecture,  is  what  was  done  in  Cyprus.  And 
here  I  would  ask  whether  the  context,  which  alludes  to  the 
manner  of  the  priestly  service,  does  not  show  that  some  reference 
to  the  priests  has  been  already  made  or  implied.  Such  a  reference 
the  proposed  emendation  supplies. 

Upon  this  view  of  the  passage  it  is  necessarily  involved  that 
the  rite  described  was  expiatory.  And  that  it  was  so  seems  to 
appear  from  several  arguments.  The  sacrifice  of  the  following 
day  consisted  in  wild  boars,  and  Avas  explained  in  connection  with 
the  Adonis  myth,  so  that  its  Semitic  origin  is  not  doubtful. 
Even  in  Greece  the  pig  is  the  great  purificatory  sacrifice,  but  in 
Semitic  religion  the  offering  of  this  animal  is  not  a  mere  ordinary 
jiiacuhmi,  but  a  mystic  rite  of  the  most  exceptional  kind  (siqjva, 
p.  272).  NoAY,  if  the  sacrifice  of  the  second  day  of  the  feast  was 
mystic,  and  therefore  piacular  in  the  highest  degree,  we  may  be 
sure  that  the  first  day's  sacrifice  was  no  ordinary  sacrificial  meal 
of  a  joyous  character.  For  a  man  must  first  be  purified,  and  then 
sit  down  gladly  at  the  table  of  the  gods,  and  not  conversely. 
Again,  the  Syrian  and  Roman  rites,  which  we  have  found  reason 
to  regard  as  forms  of  the  same  observance,  were  plainly  piacular 
or  purificatory.  In  Rome  we  have  the  women  bathing,  which  is 
a  form  of  lustration,  and  wearing  myrtle,  which  had  purifying 
virtues,  for  it  was  with  myrtle  twigs  that  the  Romans  and 
Sabines  in  the  time  of  Romulus  purged  themselves  at  the  temple 
of  Venus  Cloacina  (Preller,  Bom.  Myth.  3rd  ed.  i.  439).  And  in 
the  Syrian  rite,  where  animals  are  burned  alive  to  the  goddess, 
the  atoning  nature  of  the  sacrifice  is  unmistakeable,  and  the  idea 
of  a  mere  sacrificial  feast  is  entirely  excluded. 

A  further  argument  for  the  atoning  character  of  the  rite  may  be 
derived  from  the  choice  of  the  victim,  for  next  to  the  swine  the 
ram  was  perhaps  the  commonest  sin-ofi'ering  in  antiquity  (cf. 
Hesychius,  6'.?;.  'A<^po8(o-ta  aypa) ;  so  much  so,  that  Stephani,  in  the 
Comjite  Rendu  for  1869,  explains  the  frequent  occurrence  of  rams' 
heads  and  the  like  in  ancient  ornament  as  derived  from  the 
association  of  the  animal  with  the  power  of  averting  calamity. 
Such  ornaments  are  in  fact  aTrorpoTraia.  It  is  always  dangerous 
to  apply  general  arguments  of  this  kind  to  the  interpretation  of  a 
particular  ritual ;  for  the  same  victim  may  be  an  atoning  sacrifice 


NOTE   H. 


OF   A   SHEEP.  457 


in  one  rite  and  an  ordinary  sacrifice  in  anotlicr,  and  it  by  "'» 
means  follows  that  because,  for  example,  a  piacular  bull  was 
offered  to  Zeus,  the  same  piaculum  avouKI  be  appropriate  to  the 
Eastern  Aphrodite.  13ut  in  the  case  of  the  sheep  used  as  a  sin- 
offering,  we  have  evidence  that  there  was  no  limitation  to  a  single 
deity;  for  when  l^piiiicnides  was  brought  to  Athens  to  check  the 
plague,  he  suffered  black  and  Avhite  sheep  to  stray  at  will  from  the 
Areopagus,  and  ordered  each  to  be  sacrificed,  where  it  lay  down, 
to  the  nameless  deity  of  the  spot  (Diog.  Laert.,  i.  10).  This  form 
of  atonement  came  from  Crete,  which  Avas  one  of  the  stepi)ing- 
stones  by  which  Oriental  influence  reached  Greece,  so  that  the 
example  is  the  more  appropriate  to  our  present  argument.  And 
that,  in  point  of  fact,  sheep  or  rams  were  offered  as  piacular 
sacrifices  at  the  altars  of  the  Eastern  Aphrodite,  seems  to  follow 
from  the  Ilierapolitan  ritual  already  mentioned.  The  same  thing 
is  implied  for  Carthage  in  the  Poenulus  of  Plautus,  where  the 
sacrifice  of  six  male  lambs  is  directed  to  propitiate  the  angry 
goddess. 

These  considerations  will,  I  hope,  be  found  sufficient  to  justify 
my  general  view  of  the  Cyprian  rite,  and  to  support  the  propost'.d 
correction  on  the  text.  The  sacrifice  was  piacular,  and  tlic 
kwSlov  was  therefore  appropriate  to  the  ritual ;  but  on  the  received 
text  the  use  of  it  is  entirely  unintelligible,  whereas  the  correction 
co-KCTracr/jteVoi  restores  a  sense  which  gives  to  this  feature  the  same 
character  as  it  possesses  in  analogous  ceremonies.  But  the  most 
interesting  aspect  of  the  ceremony  is  only  brought  out  when 
we  connect  it  with  a  fact  which  I  have  hitherto  kept  in  the 
background,  because  its  significance  depends  on  a  theory  of  piacular 
and  mystic  sacrifice  Avhich  is  not  yet  generally  accepted.  A 
sheep,  or  a  sheep's  head,  is  a  religious  symbol  of  constant  occur- 
rence on  Cyprian  coins ;  and  some  of  these  coins  show  us  a  figure, 
which  experts  declare  to  be  that  of  Aphrodite,  clinging  to  the  neck 
and  fleece  of  a  running  ram.  This  device  has  been  compared 
with  others,  which  appear  to  be  Eastern  though  not  Cyprian,  in 
Avhich  Aphrodite  rides  on  a  ram  (see  De  Luynes,  Num.  Ci/pr.  PI. 
V.  3,  vi.  5,  and  the  references  in  Stephani,  Coinpte  Rendu  pour 
1869,  p.  87).  The  inference  is  that  in  Cyprus  the  sheep  was  the 
sacred  animal  of  Aphrodite-Astarte.  In  this  connection  it  is 
important  to  note  that  the  sheep  is  of  frequent  occurrence  on 
Semitic  votive  cippi  of  the  class  dedicated  to  Tanith  (a  form  of 
Astarte)  and  Laal-Hamman.     Examples  will  be  found  in  C.  I.  S. 


458  ASTARTE   AS    A 


NOTE   H. 


Pt.  I.  Nos.  398,  419,  and  in  a  cippus  from  Sulci,  figured  in 
Perrot  and  Chipiez,  iii.  253.  The  figures  on  this  class  of  cippi  are 
of  various  kinds,  and  sometimes  convey  allusions  to  sacrifices 
{C.  I.  S.  p.  282  sq.)^  but  it  appears  to  have  been  essential  to 
introduce  a  figure  or  symbol  of  the  deity.  And  when  animals 
are  figured,  they  appear  to  be  such  symbols.  Thus  we  find  fish, 
which  are  known  to  have  been  sacred  to  Astarte,  and  forbidden 
food  to  her  worshippers ;  a  bull  or  cow  couching,  the  symbol  of 
the  Sidonian  Astarte  ;  the  elephant,  which  was  not  a  sacrifice  ;  the 
horse,  which  appears  so  often  on  the  coins  of  Carthage,  and  is 
certainly  a  divine  symbol,  as  it  is  sometimes  winged.  On  these 
analogies  I  conclude  that  among  the  Carthaginians,  as  in  Cyprus, 
the  sheep  was  sacred  to  and  symbolic  of  Astarte.  To  speak  quite 
exactly,  one  ought  to  say  to  a  particular  type  of  Astarte  ;  for  as 
this  goddess,  in  the  progress  of  syncretism  so  characteristic  of 
Semitic  religion,  absorbed  a  great  number  of  local  types,  she  had 
a  corresponding  multiplicity  of  sacred  animals,  each  of  which  was 
prominent  at  particular  sanctuaries  or  in  particular  rites.  Thus 
the  dove- Aphrodite  is  specially  associated  with  Ascalon,  and  the 
Cow-goddess  with  Sidon,  where  she  was  identified  with  Europa, 
the  bride  of  the  bull-Zeus  [Dea  Syria,  iv.),  and,  according  to  Philo 
Byblius,  placed  the  head  of  a  bull  upon  her  own.  The  sheep- 
Astarte  is  another  type,  but  it  also  seems  to  have  its  original 
home  in  Canaan,  for  in  Deut.  vii.  13  the  produce  of  the  flock  is 
called  "the  Ashtaroth  of  the  sheep."  A  phrase  like  this,  which 
has  descended  from  religion  into  ordinary  life,  and  is  preserved 
among  the  monotheistic  Hebrews,  is  very  old  evidence  for  the 
association  of  Astarte  with  the  sheep  ;  and  it  is  impossible  to 
explain  it  except  by  frankly  admitting  that  Astarte,  in  one  of  her 
types,  had  originally  the  form  of  a  sheep,  and  was  a  sheep  herself, 
just  as  in  other  types  she  was  a  dove  or  a  fish. 

To  this  it  may  be  objected  that  the  ram  or  sheep  is  not  the 
symbol  of  Tanith,  but  of  the  associated  male  deity  Baal-Hamman, 
who  in  a  terra-cotta  of  the  Barre  collection  (Perrot  et  Chipiez,  iii. 
73)  is  represented  with  ram's  horns,  and  laying  his  hand  on  the 
head  of  a  sheep.  But  the  inscription  (C.  /.  S.  No.  419),  cited 
above,  is  dedicated  to  Tanith,  not  to  Tanith  and  Baal-Hammau 
conjointly,  from  which  it  appears  that  the  accompanying  symbol 
was  appropriate  to  the  goddess  as  well  as  to  her  male  partner. 

It  is  reasonable  that  the  same  animal  symbol  should  belong  to 
the  male  and  female  members  of  a  syzygy ;  and  in  the  case  of  a 


NOTE   H. 


SHEEP-GODDESS.  459 


goddess  who  was  often  represented  as  aii.lrogynous,  it  is  not  even 
necessary  to  suppose  that  her  symbol  would  be  the  ewe  and  her 
])artner's  the  ram.  Ihit  in  fact  the  shoep-symbols  on  the  Tanith 
cippi,  wliich  are  commonly  called  rams,  are  hornless,  and  so 
l)rcsumably  stand  for  ewes.  On  the  other  hand,  all  wild  sheep 
and  many  domestic  breeds  are  horned  in  both  sexes,  so  that  there 
is  n(j  diiriculty  aljout  a  horned  Sheep-goddess.  The  triangle 
surmounted  by  a  circle,  with  horns  bent  outwards,  which  is 
commonly  found  on  Tanith  cippi,  is  probably  a  symbol  of  the  god 
or  the  goddess  indifferently.  And  here  the  horns,  being  concave 
outwards,  can  neither  be  bull's  horns  nor  the  horns  of  the  crescent 
moon,  but  must  be  the  horns  of  sheep. 

The  Cypriote  coins  of  Aphrodite,  in  which  she  clings  in  a 
swimming  attitude  to  a  running  ram,  recall  the  legend  of  Helle 
and  the  golden  ram,  but  tliey  also  are  obviously  parallel  to  the 
type  of  Europa  and  the  bull.  On  this  analogy  we  ought  to 
remember  that  the  male  god  specially  associated  with  the  ram  is 
Hermes,  and  that  the  Cyprian  goddess  was  worshipped  in  an 
androgynous  form,  to  which  Theophrastus  gives  the  name  of 
Hermaphroditus.  I  have  already  cited  tliis  androgynous  character 
to  explain  why  the  Paphian  (and  apparently  the  Punic)  Aphrodite 
preferred  male  victims ;  it  now  supplies  an  additional  reason  for 
supposing  that  it  was  the  androgynous  or  bearded  Astarte  that 
was  specially  connected  with  the  ram.  On  one  of  the  cippi 
already  cited,  in  which  Tanith  is  figured  under  the  symbol  of  a 
sheep  {C.  I.  S.  419),  the  inscription  is  not  as  usually  "to  the 
Lady  Tanith,"  but  "to  my  Lord  Tanith."  If  this  is  not  a 
sculptor's  error  it  points  in  the  same  direction.  And  it  seems  not 
unlikely  that  the  standing  title,  ^yn  JQ  n:n,  which  has  given  rise 
to  so  much  discussion,  means  nothing  more  than  Tanith  with 
Baal's  face — the  bearded  goddess. 

If,  now,  the  Cyprian  goddess  was  a  Sheep-deity,  our  rite  presents 
us  with  a  piacular  sacrifice  in  which  priests,  disguised  as  sheep, 
offer  to  the  Sheep-goddess  an  animal  of  her  own  kind.  The 
ceremony  therefore  is  exactly  parallel  to  the  Roman  Lupercalia, 
a  purificatory  sacrifice  to  Faunus  under  the  name  of  Lupercus. 
The  image  of  Lupercus  at  the  Lupercal  was  naked,  and  was  clad 
in  a  goat-skin  (Justin,  xliii.  1.  7).  Here,  at  the  great  lustration  of 
1.5th  February,  the  Luperci,  who  have  tlie  same  name  as  their  goil, 
sacrifice  goats  and  run  about  the  city  naked,  daubed  with  mud 
and  girt  with  goat-skins,  applying  to  the  women  who  desire  to 


460  THE    BLOOD-COVENANT  note  i. 

participate  in  the  benefits  of  the  rite  strokes  of  thongs  which  were 
cut  from  the  skins  of  the  victims,  and  were  called  fehrua.  Both 
sacrifices  are  complete  types  of  that  most  ancient  form  of  sacra- 
mental and  piacular  mystery  in  which  the  worshippers  attest  their 
kinship  with  the  animal-god,  and  offer  in  sacrifice  an  animal  of  the 
same  kind,  which,  except  on  these  mystical  occasions,  it  woidd  be 
impious  to  bring  upon  the  altar. 


ADDITIONAL  NOTE  I  (p.  297). 

FURTHER   REMARKS    ON    THE    BLOOD    COVENANT. 

An  evidence  for  the  survival  amons?  the  Arabs  of  the  form  of 
covenant  described  by  Herodotus,  in  which  blood  is  drawn  from 
the  parties  themselves,  seems  to  lie  in  the  expression  mihdsh, 
"scarified,"  for  "confederates"  (Nabigha,  xxiv.  1  Ahlw.  =  xvii. 
1  Der.).  Goldziher,  in  an  interesting  review  of  my  Kinship 
{Liter aturhl.  f.  or.  Phil.  1886,  p.  25),  thinks  that  the  term  properly 
means  "the  burnt  ones,"  which  is  the  traditional  interpretation, 
and  suggests  that  we  have  in  it  an  example  of  a  covenant  by  fire, 
such  as  Jauhari  (see  Wellh.,  p.  124)  and  Nowairi  (Easm.,  Add. 
p.  75,  1.  11  f^qq.)  speak  of  under  the  head  of  ndr  al-hula.  It  does 
not,  however,  seem  that  in  the  latter  case  the  fire  touched  the 
parties ;  what  we  are  told  is  that  every  tribe  had  a  sacred  fire, 
and  that,  when  two  men  (obviously  two  tribesmen)  had  a  dispute, 
they  were  made  to  swear  beside  the  fire,  while  the  priests  cast  salt 
on  it.  An  oath  by  ashes  and  salt  is  mentioned  by  Al-A'sha  in  a 
line  cited  by  Wellhausen  from  Agh.  xx.  139,  and,  as  the  ashes  of 
the  cooking  pot  [ramdd  al-cidr)  are  a  nietonym  for  hospitality, 
there  is  perhaps  nothing  more  in  the  oath  by  fire  and  salt  than  an 
appeal  to  the  bond  of  common  food  that  unites  tribesmen.  This 
does  not  indeed  fully  account  for  the  fact  that  the  fire  is  called 
"  the  fire  of  terror,"  and  that  the  poetical  references  to  it  show  the 
oath  to  have  really  been  a  terrible  one,  i.e.  dangerous  to  the  man 
that  perjured  himself ;  but  it  is  to  be  remembered  that,  according 
to  Arabian  belief,  a  man  who  broke  an  oath  of  purgation  was 
likely  to  die  by  divine  judgment  (Tjokhari,  iv.  219  sq.,  viii.  40  sq.). 


NOTE  I.  AND    ITS    SURROGATES.  461 

I  think,  therefore,  that,  in  the  present  state  of  the  evidence,  we 
must  not  attempt  to  connect  tlie  mihmli  with  the  iiar  al-hilla.  If 
the  former  term  really  means  "burnt  ones,"  we  must  rather 
suppose  that  the  reference  is  to  the  practice  of  branding  with  the 
tribal  mark  or  wasm  (which  is  also  called  ndr,  Kasm.,  Add.  p.  76) ; 
for  we  learn  from  A<jh.  vii.  110,  1.  26,  that  the  icasm  was  some- 
times applied  to  men  as  well  as  to  cattle.  But  (jiirsru*  primarily 
means  "to  scarify,"  and,  as  it  is  plain  from  the  article  in  the 
Limn  that  the  traditional  explanation  of  the  word  was  uncertain, 
I  take  it  that  the  best  and  most  natural  view  is  to  interpret 
mihdsh  as  "scarified  ones." 

In  process  of  time  the  Arabs  came  to  use  various  substitutes  for 
the  blood  of  covenant,  e.g.  rohh,  i.e.  inspissated  fruit  juice  (or 
perhaps  the  lees  of  clarified  butter),  })erfumes,  and  even  holy 
water  from  a  sacred  spring  {Kinsliip,  p.  261  ;  Wellh.,  p.  121).  In 
all  these  cases  we  can  still  see  that  there  was  something  about 
the  substitute  which  made  it  an  equivalent  for  blood.  As  regards 
"  livincr  water"  tliis  is  obvious  from  what  has  been  said  in  Lecture 
v.,  p.  158  sqq.,  on  the  holiness  of  sacred  springs.  Again,  perfumes 
were  habitually  used  in  the  form  of  unguents ;  and  unguents 
— primarily  sacred  suet — are  equivalent  to  blood,  as  has  appeared  in 
Lecture  X.,  p.  363  sqq.  If  rohh  in  this  connection  means  lees  of 
butter,  the  use  of  it  in  covenant- making  is  explained  by  the 
sacredness  of  unguents  ;  but  if,  as  the  traditions  imply,  it  is  fruit 
juice,  we  must  remember  that,  in  other  cases  also,  vegetable  juices 
are  looked  upon  as  a  kind  of  blood  {supra,  pp.  126,  213). 
Compare  what  Lydus,  De  meimhus,  iv.  29,  says  of  the  use  of 
bean  juice  for  blood  in  a  Koman  ceremony,  with  the  explanation 
that  the  bean  {Kvaiio<;)  Kvei  alfxa :  the  whole  passage  is  notable, 
and  helps  to  explain  the  existence  of  a  bean-clan,  the  gens  Fahia, 
at  Rome  ;  cf.  also  the  Attic  hero  Kva/xtTT/s. 

The  Hebrew  phrase  JT"")!  m3,  "to  make  {literally,  to  cut)  a 
covenant,"  is  generally  derived  from  the  peculiar  form  of  sacrifice 
mentioned  in  Gen.  xv.,  Jer.  xxxiv.  18,  where  the  victim  is  cut 
in  twain  and  the  parties  pass  ])etween  the  i)ieces ;  and  this  rite 
again  is  explained  as  a  symbolic  form  of  imprecation,  as  if  those 
who  swore  to  one  another  prayed  that,  if  they  proved  unfaithful, 
they  might  be  similarly  cut  in  pieces.  But  this  does  not  explain 
the  characteristic  feature  in  the  ceremony — the  passing  between 
the  pieces ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  we  see  from  Ex.  xxiv.  8, 
"  this  is  the  blood  of  the  covenant  which  Jehovah  hath  cut  with 


462  vows  AND 


NOTE   K. 


you,"  that  the  dividing  of  the  sacrifice  and  the  application  of  the 
blood  to  both  parties  go  together.  The  sacrifice  presumably  was 
divided  into  two  parts  (as  in  Ex,  I.e.  the  blood  is  divided  into 
two  parts),  when  both  parties  joined  in  eating  it ;  and,  when  it 
ceased  to  be  eaten,  the  parties  stood  between  the  pieces,  as  a 
symbol  that  they  were  taken  within  the  mystical  life  of  the 
victim.  This  interpretation  is  confirmed  by  the  usage  of  Western 
nations,  who  practised  the  same  rite  with  dogs  and  other  extra- 
ordinary victims,  as  an  atoning  or  purificatory  ceremony ;  see  the 
examples  collected  by  Bochart,  Hierozoicon,  lib,  ii,  capp,  33,  56, 
There  are  many  examples  of  a  sacrifice  being  carried,  or  its  blood 
sprinkled,  round  the  place  or  persons  to  which  its  efficacy  is  to 
extend. 


ADDITIONAL  NOTE  K  (p.  315), 

THE    TABOOS    INCIDENT    TO    PILGRIMAGES    AND    VOWS, 

The  subject  of  the  taboos,  or  sacred  restrictions,  imposed  on  a 
pilgrim  or  other  votary,  is  important  enough  to  deserve  a  detailed 
examination.  These  restrictions  are  sometimes  optional,  so  that 
they  have  to  be  expressed  when  the  vow  is  taken ;  at  other  times 
they  are  of  the  nature  of  fixed  and  customary  rules,  to  which  every 
one  who  takes  a  vow  is  subject.  To  the  latter  class  belong,  e.g.^ 
the  restrictions  imposed  upon  every  Arab  pilgrim — he  must  not 
cut  or  dress  his  hair,  he  must  abstain  from  sexual  intercourse,  and 
from  bloodshed  and  so  forth  ;  to  the  former  class  belong  the  special 
engagements  to  which  the  Hebrews  give  the  name  of  Ssar  or  issdr 
(obligatio),  e.g.  Ps,  cxxxii.  3  sq.,  *'I  will  not  enter  my  house 
or  sleep  on  my  bed  until,"  etc.;  Acts  xxiii,  14,  "We  will  not 
eat  until  we  have  killed  Paul."  It  is  to  be  observed  that  restric- 
tions of  the  optional  class  are  evidently  more  modern  than  the 
other,  and  only  come  in  when  the  fixity  of  ancient  custom  begins 
to  break  down ;  in  old  Arabia  it  was  the  rule  that  one  who  was 
engaged  on  a  blood -feud  must  abstain  from  women,  wine  and 
unguents,  but  in  the  time  of  the  prophet  we  find  these  abstinences 
made  matter  of  special  engagments,  e.g.  Wacidi,  ed.  Kr,  182,  6  = 
Ibn  Hisham,  543.  8  ;  Agli.  vi.  99.  24,  30,     Where  the  engagement 


NOTE  K.  PILGRIMAGE.  463 

is  optional,  it  naturally  assumes  the  character  of  an  incentive  to 
prompt  discharge  of  the  vow  ;  the  votary  stimulates  his  own  zeal 
by  imposing  on  himself  abstinence  from  certain  of  the  comforts  of 
life  till  his  task  is  discharged ;  see  Marzuci  as  quoted  by  Reiske, 
Abulfeda,  vol.  i.  p.  18  of  the  Adnotationes,  where  the  phrase  md 
iaidarithu  H-nafsu  bihi  may  be  compared  with  the  LI'S:  Dljyb  "IDN 
of  Numb.  XXX.  14.  l^ut  the  stated  abstinences  which  go  as  a 
matter  of  course  with  certain  vows  cannot  be  explained  on  this 
principle^,  and  when  they  are  examined  in  detail,  it  becomes  mani- 
fest that  they  are  simply  taboos  incident  to  a  state  of  consecration, 
the  same  taboos  in  fact  which  are  imjwsed,  Avithout  a  vow,  on 
every  one  who  is  engager!  in  worship  or  priestly  service  in  the 
sanctuary,  or  even  every  one  who  is  present  in  the  holy  place. 
Thus  the  Hebrew  Nazarite  was  required  to  abstain  from  wine,  and 
from  uncleanness  due  to  contact  with  the  dead,  and  the  same  rules 
apj)lied  to  priests,  either  generally  or  when  they  were  on  service 
(Lev.  X.  9,  xxi.  1  sqq.).  Again,  the  taboo  on  sexual  intercourse 
which  lay  on  the  Arabian  pilgrim  applies,  among  the  Semites 
generally,  to  every  one  who  is  engaged  in  an  act  of  worship  or 
present  in  a  holy  place  (see  above,  p.  435) ;  and  the  prohibition  of 
bloodshed,  and  therefore  also  of  hunting  and  killing  game,  is  only 
an  extension  of  the  general  rule  that  forbids  bloodshed  on  holy 
ground.  Further,  when  the  same  taboos  that  attach  to  a  pilgrim 
apply  also  to  braves  on  the  war-path,  and  especially  to  men 
who  are  under  a  vow  of  blood-revenge,  it  is  to  be  remembered 
that  with  the  Semites,  and  indeed  with  all  primitive  peoples,  war 
is  a  sacred  function,  and  the  warrior  a  consecrated  person  (cf.  pp. 
383,  436).  The  Arabic  root  halla  (Heb.  ^^n)  applied  to  the  dis- 
charge (lit.  the  \intying)  of  a  vow,  is  the  same  which  is  regularly 
used  of  emergence  from  a  state  of  taboo  (the  ihrdin,  ihe' idda  of 
widowhood,  etc.)  into  ordinary  life. 

Wellhauscn  observes  that  the  Arabic  nadhara  and  the  Hebrew 
no  both  mean  primarily  "  to  consecrate."  In  an  ordinary  vow  a 
man  consecrates  some  material  thing,  in  the  vow  of  pilgrimage  or 
war  he  consecrates  himself  for  a  particular  purpose.  The  Arabs 
have  but  one  root  to  express  both  forms  of  vow,  but  in  Hebrew 
and  Syriac  the  root  is  differentiated  into  two  :  "ilj,  3yJ,  "to  vow," 
but  l^ra,  r^P,  "a  consecrated  person."  The  Syriac  nSzir,  not- 
withstanding its  medial  z,  is  not  a  mere  loan-word  from  the  Old 
Testament,  but  is  applied,  for  example,  to  maidens  consecrated  to 
the  service  of  Belthis  (Is.  Ant.  i.  212,  1.  130). 


464  vows   AND  NOTE  K. 

In  the  case  of  pilgrimage  it  seems  that  the  votary  consecrates 
himself  by  devoting  his  hair,  which  is  part  of  himself,  as  an  offer- 
ing at  the  sanctuary.  Whether  the  consecration  of  the  warrior 
was  originally  effected  in  the  same  way,  and  the  discharge  of  the 
vow  accomplished  by  means  of  a  hair- offering,  can  only  be  matter 
of  conjecture,  but  is  at  least  not  inconceivable.  If  it  was  so,  the 
deity  to  whom  the  hair  was  dedicated  must  have  been  the  kindred 
god  of  the  clan,  who  alone,  in  primitive  religion,  could  be  conceived 
as  interested  in  the  avenging  of  the  tribal  blood ;  and  we  may 
suppose  that  the  hair-offering  of  the  warriors  took  place  in  con- 
nection with  the  "  sacrifice  of  the  home-comers,"  to  be  spoken  of 
in  note  N,  infra.  It  must,  however,  be  observed  that  all  over  the 
world  the  head  and  hair  of  persons  under  taboo  are  peculiarly 
sacred  and  inviolable,  and  that  the  primitive  notions  about  the 
hair  as  a  special  seat  of  life,  which  have  been  spoken  of  at  p.  306, 
are  quite  sufficient  to  account  for  this,  without  reference  to  the  hair- 
offering,  which  is  only  one  out  of  many  apphcations  of  these  ideas. 
It  is  easy,  for  example,  to  understand  why,  if  an  important  part  of 
the  life  resides  in  the  hair,  a  man  whose  whole  life  is  consecrated 
— e.g.  a  Maori  chief,  or  the  Flamen  Dialis,  or  in  the  Semitic  field 
such  a  person  as  Samuel  or  Samson — should  either  be  forbidden 
to  cut  his  hair  at  all,  or  should  be  compelled,  when  he  does  so,  to 
use  special  precautions  against  the  profanation  of  the  holy  growth. 
From  Ezek.  xliv.  20  we  may  conclude  that  some  Semitic  priests 
let  their  hair  grow  unpolled,  like  Samuel,  and  that  others  kept 
it  close  shaved,  like  the  priests  of  Egypt ;  both  usages  may  be 
explained  on  a  single  principle,  for  the  risk  of  profaning  the  hair 
could  be  met  by  not  allowing  it  to  grow  at  all,  as  well  as  by  not 
allowing  it  to  be  touched.  Among  the  Hebrews,  princes  as  well  as 
priests  were  consecrated  persons,  and  Jiazlr  sometimes  means  a 
prince,  while  nezer,  "consecration,"  means  "a  diadem."  As  a 
diadem  is  in  its  origin  nothing  more  than  a  fillet  to  confine  hair 
that  is  worn  long,  I  apprehend  that  in  old  times  the  hair  of  Hebrew 
princes,  like  that  of  a  Maori  chief,  was  taboo,  and  that  Absalom's 
long  locks  (2  Sam.  xiv.  26)  were  the  mark  of  his  political  pre- 
tensions, and  not  of  his  vanity.  When  the  hair  of  a  Maori  chief 
was  cut  it  was  collected  and  buried  in  a  sacred  place  or  hung  on 
a  tree ;  and  it  is  noteworthy  that  Absalom's  hair  was  cut  annually 
at  the  end  of  the  year — i.e.  in  the  sacred  season  of  pilgrimage,  and 
that  it  was  collected  and  weighed,  which  suggests  a  religious  rite 
similar  to  that  mentioned  by  Herod.,  ii.  65. 


NOTE  K.  PILGRIM ACxE.  465 

While  the  general  principle  is  clear,  that  the  restrictions  laid  on 
persons  under  a  vow  were  originally  taboos,  incident  to  a  state  of 
consecration,  it  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  we  can  always  explain 
these  taboos  in  detail ;  for  in  the  absence  of  direct  evidence,  it  is 
often  almost  impossible  for  modern  man  to  divine  the  workings 
of  the  primitive  mind. 

Something,  however,  may  be  said  about  two  or  throe  rules 
which  seem,  at  first  sight,  to  lend  colour  to  the  notion  that  the 
restrictions  are  properly  privations,  designed  to  prevent  a  man 
from  delaying  to  fulld  his  vow.  The  Syrian  pilgrim,  during  his 
whole  journey,  was  forbidden  to  sleep  on  a  bed.  With  this  rule 
Wellhausen  compares  the  custom  of  certain  Arabs,  who,  during 
the  ihrdm,  did  not  enter  their  houses  by  the  door,  but  broke  in 
from  behind,—  a  practice  which  is  evidently  an  evasive  modifica- 
tion of  an  older  rule  that  forbade  the  house  to  be  entered  at  all. 
The  link  required  to  connect  the  Syrian  and  Arabian  rules  is 
supplied  by  Ps.  cxxxii.  3,  and  with  the  latter  may  also  be 
compared  the  refusal  of  Uriah  to  go  down  to  his  house  during  a 
campaign  (2  Sam.  xi.  11),  and  perhaps  also  the  Hebrew  usage  of 
living  in  booths  at  the  Feast  of  Tabernacles,  to  Avhich  there  are 
many  parallels  in  ancient  religion.  From  the  point  of  view  of 
taboo,  this  rule  is  susceptible  of  two  interpretations  ;  it  may  either 
be  a  precaution  against  unclean ness,  or  be  meant  to  prevent  the 
house  and  bed  from  becoming  taboo,  and  unfit  for  profane  use,  by 
contact  with  the  consecrated  person.  In  favour  of  the  second 
view  may  be  cited  the  custom  of  Tahiti,  where  the  kings  habitually 
abstained  from  entering  an  ordinary  house,  lest  it  should  become 
taboo,  and  be  lost  to  its  owner.  However  this  may  be,  the  Syrian 
practice  can  hardly  be  separated  from  the  case  of  priests  like  the 
Selli  at  Dodona,  who  were  di/iTTTOTroSes  xafjcatevvai,  nor  the  rule 
against  entering  a  house  from  the  similar  restriction  im])osed  on 
the  religious  order  of  the  Rechabites  (Jer.  xxxv.  9  sq.).  The 
Rechabites,  like  the  Xazarites  and  Arabian  votaries,  abstained 
also  from  wine,  and  the  same  abstinence  Avas  ]iractised  by 
Egyptian  priests  (Porph.,  De  Ahst.  iv.  6)  and  by  the  Pythagoreans, 
whose  whole  life  was  surrounded  by  a  network  of  taboos.  These 
parallels  leave  no  doubt  that  the  rule  of  abstinence  is  not  an 
arbitrary  privation,  but  a  taboo  incident  to  the  state  of  consecration. 
From  Judg.  xiii.  4  it  would  seem  that  fermented  drinks  fall  into 
the  same  class  with  unclean  meats;  compare  the  prohibition  of 
ferments  in  sacrifice.     Again,  the  Arabian  rule  against  washing 

2g 


466  THE   ALTAR 


NOTE  L. 


or  anointing  the  head  is  not  ascetic,  but  is  simply  a  consequence 
from  the  inviolability  of  the  head,  -which  must  not  be  touched  in 
a  way  that  might  detach  hairs.  The  later  Arabs  did  not  fully 
understand  these  rules,  as  appears  from  the  variations  of  the 
statements  by  different  authorities  about  one  and  the  same  vow ; 
cf.  for  example,  the  references  given  at  the  beginning  of  this  note 
for  the  vow  of  Abu  Sofyau,  Finally,  the  peculiar  dress  prescribed 
to  the  Arabian  pilgrim  is  no  doubt  a  privation  to  the  modern 
Moslem,  but  the  dress  is  really  nothing  else  than  the  old  national 
garb  of  Arabia,  which  became  sacred  under  the  influence  of 
religious  conservatism,  combined  with  the  principle  already  ex- 
plained [supra,  p.  432),  that  a  man  does  not  perform  a  sacred 
function  in  his  everyday  clothes,  for  fear  of  making  them  taboo. 


ADDITIONAL  NOTE  L  (p.  359). 

THE  ALTAR    AT    JERUSALEM. 

That  there  was  always  an  altar  of  some  kind  before  the  temple 
at  Jerusalem  might  be  taken  for  granted,  even  without  the  express 
mention  of  it  in  2  Kings  xi.  11  (1  Kings  viii.  22,  54);  but  this 
passage  throws  no  light  on  the  nature  of  the  altar.  Let  us 
consider  separately  (a)  the  altar  of  burnt-offering,  {h)  the  brazen 
altar, 

(a)  According  to  1  Kings  ix.  25,  Solomon  built  an  altar  of 
burnt-offering,  and  offered  on  it  three  times  a  year.  A  built  altar 
is  an  altar  of  stone,  such  as  Ahaz's  altar  and  the  altar  of  the 
second  temple  were.  There  is  no  other  trace  of  the  existence  of 
such  an  altar  before  the  time  of  Ahaz,  and  the  verse,  which  is 
omitted  by  the  Septuagint,  belongs  to  a  series  of  fragmentary 
notices,  which  form  no  part  of  the  original  narrative  of  Solomon's 
reign,  and  are  of  various  dates  and  of  uncertain  authority.  Apart 
from  this  passage  we  first  read  of  a  built  altar  in  2  Kings  xvi., 
viz.  that  which  Ahaz  erected  on  the  model  of  the  altar  {i.e.  the 
chief  altar)  at  Damascus.  Ahaz's  innovation  evidently  proved 
permanent,  for  the  altar  of  the  second  temple  was  also  a  platform 
of  stone.     According  to  the  Massoretic  text  of  2  Kings  xvi.  14,  as 


NOTE  L.  AT  JERUSALEM.  467 

it  is  usuall}'^  translated,  a  brazen  altar  was  removed  to  make  way 
for  Ahaz's  altar,  but  this  sense  is  got  by  straining  a  corrupt  text ; 
2"lp^1  cannot  govern  the  preceding  accusative,  and  to  get  sense  we 
must  cither  omit  naTDH  nxi  at  the  beginning  of  the  verse  or  read 
7V  for  ns.  The  former  course,  which  has  the  authority  of  the 
LXX.,  seems  preferable  ;  but  in  either  case  it  follows  that  we  must 
l)oint  3"ip>l,  and  that  the  whole  verse  is  an  elaborate  description 
of  the  new  ritual  introduced  by  the  king.  The  passage  in  fact 
now  runs  thus  (v.  12) :  "The  king  went  up  upon  the  new  altar 
(v.  13)  and  burned  his  holocaust  and  his  cereal  oblation,  and 
poured  out  his  libation ;  and  he  dashed  the  blood  of  the 
peace-offerings  that  were  for  himself  against  the  altar  (v.  14)  of 
brass  that  was  before  Jehovah,  and  drew  nigh  from  before  the 
7iaos,  between  the  7iaos  and  the  (new)  altar  (cf.  Ezek.  viii.  16; 
Joel  ii.  17)  and  applied  it  (i.e.  some  of  the  blood)  to  the  northern 
flank  of  the  altar."  The  brazen  altar,  therefore,  stood  quite  close 
to  the  naos,  and  the  new  altar  stood  somewhat  further  off,  pre- 
sumably in  the  middle  of  the  court,  which  since  Solomon's  time 
had  been  consecrated  as  the  place  of  burnt-offering.  Further, 
it  appears  that  the  brazen  altar  was  essentially  an  altar  for  the 
sprinkling  of  blood  ;  for  the  king  dashes  the  blood  of  his  shdamlm 
against  it  before  applying  the  blood  to  the  new  altar.  But, 
according  to  ver.  15,  he  ordains  that  in  future  the  blood  of 
sacrifices  shall  be  apjilied  to  the  new  or  great  altar,  while  the 
brazen  altar  is  reserved  for  one  particular  kind  of  offering  by  the 
king  himself  ("iplb  "h,  E.  V.  "  for  me  to  inquire  by  ").  The  nature 
of  this  offering  is  not  clear  from  the  words  used  in  ver.  15,  but  from 
ver.  14  it  appears  that  it  consisted  of  sheldmim  offered  by  the 
king  in  person.  In  short,  the  old  altar  is  not  degraded  but 
reserved  for  special  use ;  henceforth  none  but  the  king  himself  is 
to  pour  sacrificial  blood  upon  it. 

{h)  It  appears,  then,  that  the  brazen  altar  Avas  an  ancient  and 
sacred  thing,  which  had  existed  long  before  Ahaz,  and  continued 
after  his  time.  Yet  there  is  no  separate  mention  of  a  brazen  altar 
either  in  the  description  of  Solomon's  temple  furniture  (1  Kings 
vii.)  or  in  the  list  of  brazen  utensils  carried  off  by  the  Chaldasans. 
The  explanation  suggested  by  Wellhausen  {Prolegomena,  3rd  ed.  p. 
45),  that  the  making  of  the  brazen  altar  has  been  omitted  from 
1  Kings  vii.  by  some  redactor,  who  did  not  see  the  need  of  a  new 
brazen  altar  in  addition  to  that  which  the  priestly  author  of  the 
Pentateuch  ascribes  to  Moses,  does  not  fully  meet  the  case,  and 


468  CANDLESTICK  note  l. 


I  can  see  no  way  out  of  the  difficulty  except  to  suppose  that  the 
brazen  altar  of  2  Kings  xvi.  is  identical  with  one  of  the  two 
pillars  Jachin  and  Boaz.  In  the  old  time  there  was  no  difference 
between  an  altar  and  a  sacred  stone  or  pillar,  and  the  brazen 
pillars  are  simply  the  ancient  sacred  stones — which  often  occur 
in  pairs — translated  into  metal.  Quite  similarly  in  Strabo  (iii. 
5,  5)  the  brazen  pillars  of  Hercules  at  Gades,  Avhich  were  twelve 
feet  high,  are  the  place  at  which  sailors  do  sacrifice.  Of  course, 
an  altar  of  this  type  belongs  properly  to  the  old  fireless  type  of 
sacrifice  ;  but,  so  long  as  the  holocaust  Avas  a  rare  offering,  it  was 
not  necessary  to  have  a  huge  permanent  hearth  -  altar ;  it  was 
enough  to  erect  from  time  to  time  a  pyre  of  wood  in  the  middle 
of  the  court.  It  is  true  that  2  Kings  xvi.  speaks  only  of  one 
brazen  altar  used  for  the  sprinkling  of  the  sacrificial  blood,  but 
it  is  intelligible  that  usage  may  have  limited  this  function  to 
one  of  the  two  pillars. 

I  am  inclined  therefore  to  think  that  the  innovation  of  Ahaz 
lay  in  the  erection  of  a  permanent  altar  hearth,  and  in  the  intro- 
duction of  the  rule  that  in  ordinary  cases  this  new  altar  shouhl 
serve  for  the  blood  ritual  as  well  as  for  the  fire  ritual.  One  can 
thus  understand  the  fulness  with  which  the  ritual  of  the  new 
altar  is  described,  for  the  rule  of  Ahaz  was  that  which  from  his 
time  forward  was  the  law  of  the  sanctuary  of  Jerusalem.  I  feel, 
however,  that  there  still  remains  a  difficulty  as  regards  the  burn- 
ing of  the  fat  of  the  slielamlm,  which  Avas  practised  in  Israel  even 
before  the  royal  period  (1  Sam.  ii.  16).  In  great  feasts  it  would 
appear  that  the  fat  of  ordinary  offerings  was  burned,  along  with 
the  holocaust,  on  the  pavement  of  the  court  (1  Kings  viii.  64), 
but  what  was  done  with  it  on  other  occasions  it  is  not  so  easy 
to  say.  It  is  very  noteworthy,  however,  that  the  details  of  the 
capitals  of  the  brazen  pillars  are  those  of  huge  candlesticks  or 
cressets.  They  had  bowls  (1  Kings  vii.  41)  like  those  of  the 
golden  candlestick  (Zech.  iv.  3),  and  gratings  like  those  of  an 
altar  hearth.  They  seem  therefore  to  have  been  built  on  the 
model  of  those  altar  candlesticks  which  we  find  represented  on 
Phoenician  monuments ;  see  C.  I.  S.  Pt.  I.  pi.  29,  and  Perrot  and 
Chipiez,  Hist,  de  I'Art,  vol.  iii.  figs.  81  sqq.  The  similarity  to 
a  candlestick,  which  strikes  us  in  the  description  of  the  Hebrew 
pillars,  is  also  notable  in  the  twin  detached  pillars  which  are 
represented  on  coins  as  standing  before  the  temple  at  Paphos. 
See  the  annexed  figure.     Similar  cressets,  with  worshippers  before 


NOTE   L. 


ALTARS. 


4G9 


them  in  the  act  of  atloration,  are  figured  on  Assyrian  engraved 
stones  ;  see,  for  example,  INIenant,   Ghipihinc  Orient,  vol.  ii.  fig. 

46.  In  most  of  the  Assyrian  examples 
it  is  not  easy  to  draw  the  line  between 
the  candelabrum  and  the  sacred  tree 
crowned  with  a  star  or  crescent  moon. 
The  Hebrew  pillar  altars  had  also  asso- 
ciations with  the  sacred  tree,  as  appears 
from  their  adornment  of  pomegranates, 
but  so  had  the  golden  candlestick,  in 
which  the  motive  of  the  ornament  was 
taken  from  the  almond  tree  (Ex.  xxxvii.  17  .^qq.). 

It   seems    difficult    to    believe    that   the    enormous    pillars    of 
Solomon's  temple,   which,  if   the   measures  are  not  exaggerated, 
were  twenty-seven  feet   high,  Avere  actually  used  as  lire   altars  ; 
but,  if  they  were,  the  presumption  is  that  the  cressets  were  fed 
with  the  suet  of  the  sacrifices.     And  perhaps  this  is  after  all  a 
less  violent   supposition   than  that   the   details  of  a  Phoenician 
altar  candelabrum  were    reproduced    in    them  in   a    meaningless 
way.     At  any  rate  there  can   be  no  doubt  that  one  type  of  lire 
altar  among  the  Phoenicians  and  Assyrians  was  a  cresset  rather 
than  a  hearth,  and  as  this  type  comes  much  nearer  to  the  old 
cippus  than  the  broad  platform  fitted  to  receive  a  holocaust,  I  fancy 
that  it  must  be  regarded  as  the  oldest  type  of  fire  altar.     In  other 
words,  the  permanent  fire  altar  began  by  adding  to  the  sacred  stone 
an  arrangement  for  consuming  the  fat  of  ordinary  sacrifices,  at  a 
time  when  holocausts  were  stiJl  burned  on  a  pyre.     If  the  word 
"Ariel,"  "hearth  of  El,"  originally  meant  such  a  pillar  altar,  wo 
get  rid  of  a  serious  exegetical  difficulty  in  2  Sam.  xxiii.  20 ;  for 
I  in  this  view  it  will  appear  that  Benaiah's  exploit  was  to  over- 
throw the  twin  fire  pillars  of  the  national  sanctuary  of  Moab — 
an  act  which  in  these  days  probably  needed  more  courage  than 
to  kill  two  "  lion-like  men,"  as  the  English  Version  has  it.     On 
the  stele  of  Mesha  (1.   12),  an  Ariel  appears  as  something  that 
can  be  moved  from  its  place,  which  accords  with  the  view  now 
suggested.     Compare  the  twin  pillars  of  the  Tyrian  Baal,  one  of 
which  shone  by  night-  (Herod.,  ii.  44).     It  will  be  observed  that 
this  line  of  argument  lends  some  plausibility  to  Grotius's  sugges- 
tion that  the  hdmmdnlm  of  Isa.  xvii.  8,  xxvii.  9,  etc.,  are  Trvpeio. 
Finally,  it  may  be  noted  that  Amos  ix.   1  becomes  far  more 


470  SANCTUARIES 


NOTE   M. 


intelligible  if  the  altar  at  Bethel  was  a  pillar  crowned  by  a  sort  of 
capital  bearing  a  bowl  like  those  at  Jerusalem.  For  then  it  will 
be  the  altar  itself  that  is  overthrown,  as  the  context  and  the 
parallelism  of  ch.  iii.  14  seem  to  require:  "smite  the  capital 
till  the  bowls  ring  again,  and  dash  them  in  pieces  on  the  heads 
of  the  worshippers." 


ADDITIONAL  NOTE  M  (p.  367). 

HIGH   PLACES. 

In  the  text  of  the  lectures  I  have  tried  to  work  out  the  history 
of  the  fire  altar,  and  shew  how  the  place  of  slaughter  and  the 
pyre  ultimately  met  in  the  altar  hearth.  In  the  present  note  I 
will  give  some  reasons  for  thinking  that  the  gradual  change  of 
view,  Avhich  made  the  burning  and  not  the  slaughter  the  chief 
thing  in  sacrifice,  also  left  its  mark  in  another  way,  by  influencing 
the  choice  of  places  for  worship. 

It  has  been  observed  in  Lecture  V.  (p.  157)  that  the  sanctuaries 
of  the  Northern  Semites  commonly  lay  outside  and  above  the 
town.  This  does  not  seem  to  have  been  the  case  in  Arabia, 
where,  on  the  contrary,  most  sanctuaries  seem  to  have  lain  in  moist 
hollows,  beside  wells  and  trees.  And  even  in  the  Northern 
Semitic  lands  we  have  found  traces  of  sanctuaries  beside  fountains, 
beneath  the  towns,  which  were  older  than  the  high  places  on  the 
hills.  At  Jerusalem  the  sanctity  of  Gihon  and  En-Eogel  is  older 
than  that  of  the  waterless  plateau  of  Zion  above  the  town. 

Now,  in  the  discussion  of  the  natural  marks  of  holy  places,  we 
saw  how  well-watered  spots,  thickets  and  the  like,  might  naturally 
come  to  be  taken  as  sanctuaries,  and  we  also  found  it  to  be 
intelligible  that  mountain  ranges  should  be  holy  tracts  ;  but  we 
have  not  found  any  natural  reason  for  fixing  a  sanctuary  on  a 
bare  and  barren  eminence.  It  is  often  supposed  that  altars  were 
built  on  such  spots  because  they  were  open  to  the  heaven,  and 
nearer  than  other  points  of  earth  to  the  heavenly  gods  ;  but  this 
explanation  takes  a  great  deal  for  granted  that  Ave  have  no  right 
to  assume.  On  the  other  hand,  if  the  exptlanation  of  the  origin  of 
burnt-offering  given  above  is  correct,  it  is  obvious  that  the  barren 
and  unfrequented  hill-top  above  a  town  would  be  one  of  the  most 
natural  places  to  choose  for  burning  the  holocaust.     In  process  of 


NOTE  N. 


ON  HILL-TOPS.  471 


time  a  particular  point  on  the  hill  would  become  tlie  established 
place  of  burning,  and,  as  soon  as  tlie  burnt  flesh  began  to  be 
regarded  as  a  food-olfering  presented  to  the  deity,  the  i)lace  of 
burning  would  be  itself  a  sanctuary.  Ultimately  it  would  become 
the  chief  sanctuary  of  the  town,  and  be  fitted  up  with  all  the 
ancient  apparatus  of  sacred  posts  and  sacrificial  pillars. 

That  the  high  places,  or  hill  sanctuaries,  of  the  Semites  were 
primarily  places  of  burnt  sacrifice  cannot  be  proved  by  direct 
evidence,  but  may,  I  think,  be  made  probable,  t|uite  apart  from 
the  argument  that  has  just  been  sketched.  In  Arabia  we  read  of 
only  one  sanctuary  that  had  "  a  place  of  burning,"  and  this  is  the 
hill  of  Cozali  at  Mozdalifa.  Among  the  Hebrews  the  sacrifice  of 
Isaac  takes  place  on  a  mountain  (Gen.  xxii.  2),  and  so  does  the 
burnt  sacrifice  of  Gideon.  The  annual  mourning  on  the  mountains 
at  Mizpch  in  Gilead  must  have  been  connected  with  a  sacrifice  on 
the  mountains,  which,  like  that  of  Laodicea,  was  thought  to 
represent  an  ancient  human  sacrifice  (Judg.  xi.  40).  In  Isa.  xv.  2 
the  Moabites  in  their  distress  go  up  to  the  high  places  to  mourn, 
and  presumably  to  offer  atoning  holocausts.  It  is  to  offer  burnt 
sacrifice  that  Solomon  visits  the  high  place  at  Gibeon  (1  Kings 
iii.  4),  and  in  general,  itsp,  "  to  burn  sacrificial  flesh  "  (not  as  E.V. 
"  to  burn  incense"),  is  the  usual  word  applied  to  the  service  of  the 
high  places.  A  distinction  between  a  high  place  (h'lma)  and  an 
altar  {mizhedli)  is  acknowledged  in  the  Old  Testament  down  to  the 
close  of  the  kingdom  (2  Kings  xxiii.  15;  Isa.  xxxvi.  7);  but 
idtimately  hama  is  the  name  applied  to  any  idolatrous  shrine  or 
altar. 


ADDITIONAL  NOTE  N  (p.  384). 

SACRIFICE   BY   VICTORIOUS   WARRIORS. 

According  to  Abu  'Obaida,  the  Arabs,  after  a  successful  foray, 
sacrificed  one  beast  from  the  spoil,  and  feasted  upon  it  before  the 
division  of  the  booty  {Ham.  p.  458 ;  Reiske,  An.  Mos.  i.  26  sqq. 
of  the  notes ;  cf.  Lisan,  x.  240).  This  victim  is  called  nacta,  or 
more  fully  nactat  al-coddam,  "the  nana  of  the  home- comers." 
The  verb  ,JiJ  is  used  generally  of  sacrificing  for  a  guest,  but  its 
primary  sense  is  to  split  or  rend,  so  that  the  name  of  nacl'a  seems 
to   denote    some   peculiar  way  of   killing   the   victim.     Now   it 


472  THE   SACRIFICE 


NOTE   N. 


appears  from  the  narrative  of  Niliis  that  the  victims  of  the 
Saracens  were  derived  from  the  choicest  part  of  the  booty,  from 
which  they  selected  for  sacrifice,  by  preference  a  handsome  boy, 
or  if  no  boys  had  been  captured,  a  white  and  immaculate  camel. 
The  camel  exactly  corresponds  to  the  nacta  of  the  Arabs,  and  the 
name  probably  means  a  victim  torn  to  pieces  in  the  way  described 
by  Nilus.  It  seems  probable,  therefore,  that  the  sacrifice  made  for 
warriors  on  their  return  from  a  foray  was  not  an  ordinary  feast, 
but  an  antique  rite  of  communion,  in  which  the  victim  was  a 
sacred  animal,  or  might  even  be  an  actual  man. 

That  the  warriors  on  their  return  should  unite  in  a  solemn  act 
of  service  is  natural  enough ;  the  thing  falls  under  the  same 
category  with  the  custom  of  shaving  one's  head  at  the  sanctuary 
on  returning  from  a  journey,  and  is,  in  its  oldest  meaning,  simply 
a  retying  of  the  sacred  links  of  common  life,  which  may  have 
grown  weak  through  absence  from  the  tribal  seat.  But  of  course 
a  sacrifice  of  this  kind  would  in  later  times  appear  to  be  piacular 
or  lustral,  and  accordingly,  in  the  Levitical  law,  an  elaborate 
purification  is  prescribed  for  warriors  returning  from  battle,  before 
they  are  allowed  to  re-enter  their  homes  (Numb.  xxxi.  19  sqq.). 
In  ancient  Arabia,  on  the  other  hand,  where  warriors  were  under 
the  same  taboos  as  a  man  engaged  on  pilgrimage,  the  nacta  was 
no  doubt  the  means  of  untying  the  taboo,  and  so  returning  to 
ordinary  life. 

These  remarks  enable  us  to  put  the  sacrifice  of  captives,  or  of 
certain  chosen  captives,  in  a  somewhat  clearer  light.  This 
sacrifice  is  not  an  act  of  blood-revenge,  for  revenge  is  taken  in 
hot  blood  on  the  field  of  battle.  The  captive  is  simply,  as  Nilus 
puts  it,  the  choicest  part  of  the  prey,  chosen  for  a  religious 
purpose ;  and  the  custom  of  preferring  a  human  victim  to  a 
camel  is  probaljly  of  secondary  growth,  like  other  customs  of 
human  sacrifice.  It  seems,  however,  to  be  very  ancient,  for  Saul 
undoubtedly  spares  Agag  in  order  that  he  may  be  sacrificed,  and 
Samuel  actually  accomplishes  this  offering  by  slaying  him  "  before 
the  Lord "  in  Gilgal.  And  in  this,  as  in  other  cases  of  human 
sacrifice,  the  choice  of  an  alien  instead  of  a  tribesman  is  not  of  the 
essence  of  the  rite,  for  Jephthah  looses  his  vow  on  his  return 
from  smiting  the  Ammonites  by  the  sacrifice  of  his  own  daughter. 

According  to  the  Arabian  lexicographers,  the  term  nacta  may 
be  applied  to  sacrifices  made  on  various  occasions  other  than 
return  from  war,  e.g.  to  a  coronation  feast,  or  that  which  a  man 


NOTE  N.  OF    TTOME-COMERS.  473 


makes  for  his  intimates  on  his  marriage  ;  wliilo  ulliinately  Iho 
word  appears  to  assume  a  very  <feneral  sense,  and  be  api)lied  to 
any  slaughter  to  entertain  a  guest.  For  tlie  occasions  on  which 
the  Arabs  were  wont  to  kill  a  vicliin,  which  are  very  much  the 
same  as  those  on  which  slaughter  of  the  sacred  cattle  is  permitted 
by  African  peoples  {siijn-a,  p.  279),  note  the  verse  cited  in  lAKd)/, 
vi.  226,  X.  240  (and  with  a  variation,  Tc'tJ,  v.  519,  1.  2),  Avhere  the 
desirable  meats  inchule  the  h-Jinrs,  the  t'dhar,  and  the  nacl'a. 
The  first,  which  is  the  name  applied  to  the  broth  given  to  women 
in  child-bed,  denotes  also  the  feast  made  at  a  birth ;  the  tdhclr  is 
the  feast  at  a  circumcision.  In  Joiirn.  PliiJ.  xiv.  124,  I  have 
connected  the  khors  with  the  Hebrew  D'U'in,  "  charms."  Charmed 
food  is  of  course  primarily  holy  food. 


INDEX  OF  PASSAGES  OF  SCRIPTURE. 


Genesis. 

i.  2       

i.  28,  29 

ii.  liisqq. 

iii.  15,  21 

iv.  4,  5  ...        162, 

iv.  10 

iv.  14  sq. 

\i.  2,  4 

vii.  11 

viii.  3sqq. 
viii.  20 
ix.  1  sq. 

X. 

xii.  6 

xii.  7 

xiv.  5  

xiv.  13 

XV.  8  sqq.  202, 

x.xi.  21 

xxi.  33 

xxii. 

x.xii.  2 

xxii.  8-13 

xxii.  9 

xxii.  10 
xxii.  13 
xxii.  14 
xxiv.  11 

xxvi 

xxvii.  7 

xxvii.  15,  27  ... 

xxvii.  29 

XX  viii.  12 

xxviii.  18  sqq.  108, 

XX viii.  22 

xxix.  14 

XXX.  41,  42     ... 

xxxi.  45  sqq.  ... 

xxxii.  2 

xxxii.  28,  30  ... 

xxxii.  33 

XXXV.  2 

XXXV.  8 

XXXV.  14 

xxxvi.  14 


PAOE 

... 

97 

... 

289 

289 

289 

289, 

443 

397 

252 

427 

97 

397 

358 

289 

5 

... 

179 

... 

108 

292 

119 

301 

,  461 

43 

170 

343 

,  446 

471 

291 

... 

358 

355 

340 

108 

157 

99 

206 

... 

433 

383 

427 

186 

,214 

187 

,  229 

256 

446 

... 

18fi 

... 

427 

427 

360 

433 

179 

... 

214 

... 

43 

— 1/ 

PAOE 

PAOE 

xxxvi.  28 

...      43 

iii.  3     

...    360 

xxxvii.  27 

...     2.56 

iii.  11 

...     184 

xxxviii.  24 

...     398 

iii.  17 

...     220 

xii.  46  sqq. 

...     185 

iv 

...     326 

xlviii.  14 

...     402 

iv.  6,11,17,20,34 

330, 331 

xlix.  3... 

...     445 

iv.  15 

...     396 

xlix.  8... 

...     383 

V.  11     

...    206 

xlix.  25 

...      97 

vi.  16(22)       ... 

...     206 

vi.  20  (27)         331 

432,  434 

vi.  22  (29)       ... 

...     3.59 

Exodus. 

vi.  23(30)       ... 

...    330 

vii.  8 

...     414 

iii.  1  sqq. 

110,  136 

vii.  10 

...     223 

iii.  5     ... 

...     434 

vii.  13 

...    203 

xii.  9    ... 

...     387 

vii.  14 

...     224 

xii.  46... 

...     326 

vii.  15  sqq. 

221,  367 

xiii.  13 

431,  445 

vii.  27 

...     324 

xvii.  15 

...     108 

viii.  15 

...    415 

xix. 

...     136 

viii.  23 

...    326 

xix.  4   ... 

...     Ill 

X.  7      

...    331 

xix.  10-13 

...     32.'! 

X.  9      

...    463 

xix.  15... 

...     435 

X.  17    

...     326 

xix.  20... 

...     433 

xi.  32  sqq.       ... 

...     428 

XX.  24  sq. 

lie 

)i'l85,354,  358 

xi.  41 

...     275 

XX.  30  ... 

...     445 

xii.  6,  8 

...    202 

xxi.  13,  14 

) 

138,  409 

xiv.  4, 6, 14, 22, 49 

202, 326, 

xxii.  28 

...     445 

423 

xxii.  29 

...     222 

xiv.  7,  53 

...     402 

xxii.  30 

...     443 

xiv.  17,  51      ... 

...    407 

xxiii.  15 

...     328 

xvi.  15 

...    39G 

xxiii.  18 

...     203 

xvi.  19,  33      ... 

389,  415 

xxiii.  19 

204, 

222,  364 

xvi.  21 

...     401 

xxiv.  4  sqq. 

194,301 

,325,396 

xvi.  24 

...     432 

xxiv.  8 

...    461 

xvi.  24,  28      ... 

...     333 

xxxiv.  13 

...     186 

xvi.  26,  28       ... 

432,  444 

xxxiv.  19 

...     443 

xvi.  27 

...     330 

xxxiv.  20 

"431, 

444,  445 

xvi.  .SO 

...     388 

xxxiv.  26 

... 

204   222 

xvi.  33 

...     415 

xxxvii.  17 

sqq. 

"...  '  469 

xvii.  7 

xvii.  11 

xvii.  10,  11      ... 

...     113 

346,  397 
220,  289 

Leviticus 

xvii.  13" 

...     217 

xix.  6 

...    221 

i.  14     ... 

... 

...     202 

xix.  17 

...     407 

ii.  1  sqq. 

202,  206 

xix.  23  sqq. 

149,  444 

u.  11,  13 

203,  204 

xix.  24 

...    204 

*-^ 


476 


INDEX    OF    PASSAGES    OF    SCRIPTURE. 


PACE 

PAOE 

PAOR 

xix.  26 

324 

xxiii.  10-15     ... 

.     436 

ii.  13  sqq. 

..     221 

xix.  27 

'.'.       306, 

307 

xx.vi.  1  sqq 

223 

ii.  15     

...     364 

xix.  28 

304, 

316 

xxvi.  12 

.     231 

ii.  16     I 

!20.  468 

XX.  14  ... 



353 

xxvi.  13 

.    266 

ii.  27  sqq. 

..     400 

xxi.  1  sqq. 

463 

xxxii.  6 

..      42 

iii.  14 

...     219 

xxi.  .5    ... 

;;    304 

306 

xxxiii.  2 

.    Ill 

iv.  7  sqq. 

...       38 

xxi.  8,  17  sqq. 

184 

xxxiii.  9 

.     326 

vi.  14 

...     291 

xxi.  9   ... 

353, 

398 

xxxiii.  13 

.      97 

vii.  6     

...     409 

xxii.  27 

445 

xxxiii.  16 

.     177 

vii.  9     ...          349,  I 

$83,  445 

xxii.  30 



221 

xxxiii.  29 

.    383 

vii.  12 

...     186 

xxiii.  14 

223 

xxxiv.  9 

.     402 

vii.  15,  17 

...     228 

xxiii.  17 

.'.       203 

223 

viii 

...      67 

XXV.  23 

78 

ix 

..     221 

XXV.  49 

256 

Joshua. 

ix.  6      

...     119 

xxvii.  26 

414 

iv.  5 

.     186 

ix.  11 

...     157 

xxvii.  27 

;.'        431, 

444 

iv.  20 

.     194 

ix.  12,  13         ...        5 

536,  262 

xxvii.  28 

434 

v.  15 

.     434 

X.  3       ^ 

530,  236 

vi.  24 

.     435 

xi.  7      

..     383 

vi.  26 

.    435 

xii.  12 

...      66 

NUM] 

3ER9. 

vii 

.     435 

xiii.  10 

..     383 

vii.  1,  11 

.     400 

xiii.  12 

..     328 

iii. 



445 

vii.  15 

.     398 

xiv.  24  sqq. 

..     434 

v.  11  sqq. 



164 

vii.  24 

.     435 

xiv.  32  sq. 

..     185 

vi.  10    ... 



202 

ix.  14 

.     253 

xiv.  34 :: 

!22,  327 

vi.  13  sqq. 

314 

xxii.  19 

.       92 

xiv.  35 

...     108 

vi.  15    ... 

224 

xxiv.  26 

.     186 

XV 

..     435 

viii.  10 



402 

xvii.  34 

...     119 

XV.  5     ... 

203 

xviii.  3  sqq.     ... 

..    317 

XV.  7     ... 

213 

Judges. 

xix.  24 

..     432 

XV.  38  ... 



416 

XX.  6,  29          ...        5 

536,  258 

xvii. 



180 

iii.  3     

.       93 

XX.  27 

..     221 

xviii.  18 



445 

iii.  7     

.     172 

xxi.  4    ... 

..     224 

xix.  4   ... 

357 

iii.  19,  26 

.    194 

xxi.  5,  6          ...        4 

135,  43" 

xix.  7-10 

..'       333, 

405 

V.  4  sqq. 

.     Ill 

xxi.  7 

..     437 

xxi.  17,  18 

127, 

167 

V.  30 

.     440 

xxi.  9 

..     441 

xxi.  29 

42 

vi.  19 

.     204 

xxii.  7 

..    441 

xxiv.  24 

383 

vi.  20    ...          109,  3 

33,  358 

xxvi.  19    37,  47,  92, '. 

519,  329 

XXV.  4  ... 

398 

vi.  26 3 

58,  38:^ 

XXX.  20 

..     440 

xxviii.  7 

213 

viii.  20 

.     396 

XXX.  26 

..       38 

XXX.  14 

463 

viii.  23 

66 

xxxi.  10 

..     351 

xxxi.  19  sqq. 

472 

viii.  24 

.     440 

xxxi.  12 

..    353 

xxxi.  28  sqq. 

440 

viii.  27 

ix.  2 

ix.  8  sqq.           119,  i: 

.     441 
.     256 
26,  423 

2  Samuel. 

Deutei 

tONOMY. 

ix.  13 

.     203 

ix.  27   ...          204,  21 

56,  243 

i.  19     

..    448 

i. 



91 

ix.  37 

.     179 

u.  13     

..    1.57 

iii.  6     ... 



91 

ix.  45 

.     435 

V.  1       

..     256 

iv.  19    ... 

37 

xi.  31 

.    383 

V.  21     

..      38 

vii.  13  ... 



458 

xi.  40 

.    471 

V.  25     

..    179 

vii.  26... 



435 

xiii.  4 

.     465 

vi.  14 

..     432 

xi.  30    ... 

179 

xiii.  19            ...        1( 

39,  358 

vi.  19 2 

30,  236 

xii.  3    ... 

186 

xvi.  2,  3  sqq 

.    236 

viii.  10  sqq.     . . . 

..    441 

xii.  16  ... 

201,  217, 

220 

xvii.  2  ... 

.    434 

ix.  14 

..      38 

xii.  17  sqq. 

445 

xix.  29 

.     383 

xi.  11 

..     465 

xiii.  16... 

. 

435 

.XX.  33 

.     176 

xiv.  26 

..     464 

xiv.  1  ... 

..42,304, 

306 

XV.  11 

..     236 

XV.  19  sqq. 

445 

xix.  12 

..    256 

xvi.  21 

.■■       171 

172 

Ruth. 

XX.  8     

..    186 

xviii.  4 

223, 

224 

i.  14  sqq 

.      37 

xxi 

..     400 

xxi.  1-9 

399 

xxi.  9 

..  3,  98 

xxi.  4  ... 
xxi.  12 

351 
..       408, 

396 

428 

1  Samuel. 

xxiii.  16 
xxiii.  17 

..     157 
..    214 

xxi.  18 



60 

i.  3,  21 

.    236 

xxiii.  20 

.     4*i9 

xxi.  21 

•  *  • 

351 

i.  21,  24 

.    230 

xxiv 

..    353 

INDEX    OF    TASSAGES    OF    SCRIPTURE. 


477 


1  Kings. 


KZUA. 


i.  9,  38... 
1  32  sq. 
iii.  4  ... 
iv.  7  S(/(/. 
iv.  19  ... 
vii. 

vii.  21  ... 
vii.  41  ... 
viii.  23,  54 
viii.  (54... 
ix.  25   ... 
xi.  5 
xii.  30  ... 
XV.  13  ... 
xvi.  31... 
xvi.  33... 
xvi.  34... 
xviii.  5... 
xviii.     ... 
xviii.  19 
xviii.  28 
xviii.  33  sqq. 
xxi.  1   ... 
x.\i.  13,  19 
xxii.  38 


PAGE  ] 

157,  18<> 
...  67 
...  471 
228,  441 
...  91 
...  467 
...  191 
...  468 
...  466 
358,  4K8 
...  466 
...  173 
...  165 

171,  437 
...  91 
...  171 
...  435 
...  228 

146,  .359 

172,  179 
...  303 
...  91 
...  91 
...  157 
...     157 


2  KiN(;r. 


ii.  13  sqq. 
ii.  21  ... 
iii.  4 

iii.  27  ... 
iv.  42  ... 
viii.  12... 
X.  22  ... 
xi.  11  ... 
xii.  4  ... 
xii.  16  ... 
xiii.  6  ... 
xiii.  9  ... 
XV.  5  ... 
xvi.  11  sqq. 
xvi.  14... 
xvi.  15  ... 
xvii.  26 
xvii.  31 
xxi.  6  ... 
xxi.  7  ... 
xxiii.  G... 
xxiii.  7... 
xxiii.  9... 
xxiii.  11 
xxiii.  15 


...  1.57 

293,  442 

343,  356,  445 

...  223 

...  398 

...  432 

...  466 

...  229 

329,  403 

172,  173 

...  126 

...   67 

359,  466 

467,  468 

...  228 

24,  77,  92,  115 

...  343 

...  343 

...  171 

...  171 

...  175 

...  223 

...  275 

...  471 


1  Chronicle.s. 


xxix.  15 


2  CHRONICLE.S. 


XV.  1<>  .. 

XXV.  12 


78 


437 

398 


ix.  7 


r\r,F, 
...     408 


Neiiemiah. 

ii.  12 157 

viii.  10  236 


Job. 


V.  22 
xiii.  16 
xvi.  18 


Psalms. 


20 


', 


i.  13     ... 

XV. 

xvi.  4  ... 

xvi.  10... 

xxvi.  6  s(i<i.     ... 

xx.xix.  12  [Htb.  13] 

xlv.  8(7) 

xlv.  13(12)     ... 

civ.  14  sqq. 

civ.  IG  ... 

cvi.  6    ... 

ex  viii.  27 

cxi.x.  19 

cxxxii.  S  sq.    ... 

cxlviii.  7 


214, 
ISO, 


462, 


115 
l(i3 
397 


373 

98 
301 
21(i 

77 
214 
360 
321 

78 
215 
328 
203 

98 
408 
322 

78 
465 
161 


Pkoverbs. 


XV.  3  ... 
xix.  6  ... 
xxi.  27... 
xxvii.  27 
XXX.  17 


ECCLESIASTES. 


xii.  13 


iii.  11 
vii.  5 


Canticles. 


Isaiah. 


i.  11  sqq. 


10 
2 


sqq. 


66 
328 
436 
204 

60 


25 


215 
146 


244 
75 
66 


xi.  (!  sq. 
xiii.  3   ... 
xiii.  21 ... 
XV.  2  sqq. 
xvii.  8  ... 
xvii.  10  sqq. 
xxii.  12,  13 
XXX.  29 
XXX.  33 
xxxiii.  14   * 
xxxiv.  14 
xxxvi.  7 
xxxvii    1 
xlix.  15 
liii.  7    ... 
Ivii.  8  ... 
Ixi.  3    ... 
Ixii.  4  ... 
Ixv.  3  sqq. 
Ixv.  4   ... 
)xv.  5    ... 
Ixvi.  3,  17 


PACK 

. . .   2'»K 
...  38;? 
...   113 
409,  471 
171,  172 
ISO 
244 
236 
3.5;'. 
163 
113 
471 
409 
5H 
291 
437 
215 
101 
338 
273,  325 

431 

273,  325,  338 


Jeremiah. 

ii.  11    ... 

37 

ii.  27    ... 

42, 

173 

iii.  25   ... 

408 

vii. 

172 

vii.  31  ... 

353, 

445 

xi.  15(lx.x.) 

221 

xvi.  6   ... 

.304, 

.3()G 

xix.  5   ... 

353, 

44-> 

xix.  13 ... 

214 

XXV.  23 

;;        307, 

35:i 

xxxii.  29 

214 

xxxii.  35 

353 

xxxiv.  18 

4G1 

XXXV.  9  sq. 

4o5 

xxxvi.  5,  15 

436 

xliv. 

172 

xliv.  17,  18 



214 

Ii.  8      ... 



3j3 

Lamentations. 


ii.  7 


244 


Ezekiel. 


iv.  14  ... 
vii.  18  ... 
viii.  10... 
viii.  12... 
viii.  14 ... 
viii.  16... 
xvi.  17... 
xvi.  18... 
xvi.  20... 
xviii.  6... 
.XX.  25  ... 
xxii.  9  ... 
xxiii.  37 


325 

306 

122,  ;«K 
;{.s.s 
172 
4.7 
437 
215 

355,  375 
324 
445 
.324 
375 


478 


INDEX    OF    PASSAGES    OF   SCRIPTURE. 


PACK 

xxiii.  39          ...        353,  355 

xxxiii.  25        324 

xxxix.  17  sqq.            ...  236 

xli.  22 184 

xliii.  18  sqq 415 

xliii.  24           435 

xliv 77 

xliv.  6  sqq 396 

xliv.  20           ...        306,  4fi4 

xlv.  9  sqq 228 

xlv.  18  sqq 415 

xlv.  19,  20(lxx.)       ...  389 

xlvii 167 


HOSEA. 


11. 

ii.  8  sqq. 
ii.  15  (13) 
ii.  20  (18) 
iii.  4     ... 
iv. 

iv.  8  ... 
iv.  12  ... 
iv.  14  ... 
vii.  14  ... 
viii.  1  ... 
ix.  3  ... 
ix.  4 
ix.  15  ... 
X.  9  ... 
x.  14  ... 
xi.  1  ... 
xii.  4    ... 


ii.  12  sqq. 
ii.  17     ... 


92,  220, 


Joel. 


Amos. 


i.  2 
ii.  1 


...  437 
95 
236,  433 
...  115 
...  186 
...  24 
...  329 
...  179 
...  436 
...  409 
...  94 
...  91 
223,  304 
...  94 
...  408 
,..  398 
...  42 
...    427 


...     409 
...     467 


...     146 
...    353 


ii.  7,8... 
iii.  12  ... 
iii;  14   ... 
iv.  4 
iv.  5 

v.  11  ... 
v.  19  ... 
v.  22  ... 
vi.  4 

vi.  10  ... 
vii.  1  ... 
vii.  13  ... 
vii.  17  ... 
viii.  10... 
viii.  14... 
ix.  1  ... 
ix.  3 


PAGE 

231,  329,  409 

119 

470 

221,  224,  229 
203,  236 

232 

Ill 

219 

409 

3.53 

228 

229 

92 

306 

165,  166 

469 

146 


MlCAH. 

iv.  13 434,  441 

V.  6(5) 91 

V.  12  sqq.  ...  172,186 
vi.  7  ...  202,  219,  343,  353 
vii.  14 146 


Habarkuk. 


i.  13     ... 
iii.  3     ... 


...      66 
...     Ill 


Zephaniah. 
i.  7       236 


Haggai. 


ii.  12 


221 


Zechariah. 
iv.  3     468 


V.  6 

V.  5  sqq. 
ix.  7  ... 
xi.  3 
xii.  10, 11 


PAOE 

...  434 
...  402 
324,  325 
...  124 
...  392 


Malachi. 


i.  6 

i.  7,12.. 
ii.  4  sqq. 
ii.  11  .. 
iii  17  .. 


..      59 

..     184 

..     326 

..       43 

46,  60 


Ecclesiasticus. 


1.  15 


213 


Matthew. 


XXV.  23 


xi.  24    ... 


xvii.  19 


xxiii.  14 


Luke. 


John. 


Acts. 


..    297 


113 


393 


..    462 


1  Corinthians. 


X.  25 


247 


Hebrews. 
ix.  22 406 


GENERAL    INDEX. 


Abibaal,  father  of  Hiram,  45 
Ablution  after  a  piacular  sacrifice, 

332  sq.  ;  removes  tal)()o,  432 
Absalom,  long  hair  of,  464 
Acacia,  see  Samora 
Achan,  401 

'Aclca,  ceremony,  310  s^. 
Atiar,  god,  274 
Adonis,  divine  title,  68  ;  Swine-god, 

392;  worship  of,   172,   311,    456; 

mourning  for,   391   sq.  ;    gardens, 

180  ;  sacred  river,  145,  158  ftq. 
Adranus,  god,  274  «.,  426 
Adytum,  183 

Africa,  cattle  sacred  in,  278  sqq. 
Ahaz,  altar  of,  359 
'Ain  al-Bacar,  at  Acre,  166  n. 
Altar  as  place  of  slaughter,  322  ;  as 

table,    183;    as  hearth,    358  sqq.; 

cleansing  of,  389  ;  Ahaz's,  359,  466 
Altars,  candlestick,  364,  468 
Amathns,  human  sacrifices  at,  356  ; 

asylum,  138  n. 
Amen,  god,   how  worshipped,   284  ; 

annual  sacrifice  to,  410 
'Amm-anas,  Arabian  god,  208 
Amulets,  362,429;  cutotl'on  reaching 

manliood,    311  ;   of  thongs,    416  ; 

found  in   rivers,   167  ;   jewels   as, 

434  ;  phalli  as,  438.     See  Charm 
Anaitis,  worship  of,  303  7i. 
Aiiathoth,  193 
Angels,  426  sq. 
Animal  gods,  425 
Animals    used     for     sacrifice,    201  ; 

sanctity  of,  based  ou  their  kinship 

with  man,  267  sqq.  ;  substitution 

of,  for  human  victims,  346  ;  sacred, 

in  Egypt,  208  sq.,  283  ;  unclean, 

276 
Annual  piacula,  385  sqq. 
Anointing,  215,  364 
Ansdb,  sacred  stones,  184,  193 


Anselm,  147,  404 
Anthropomorphism,  84 
Antiocli,  annual  feast  at,  356 
Aphaca,    128,    155,    159,    161   sq., 

176 
Apis,  Calf-god,  283 
Apollo  Lermenus,  435  h. 
April,  Calends  of,  450  sqq. 
Arab  tribes,  named  from  gods,  46 
Arabia,    pilgrimage     in,     102     sq.  ; 

]irinutive  sacrifice  in,  320  ;  sacred 

tract  (Himfi)  in,  134  sq.,  145  sqq.  ; 

sanctuaries    in,     104,     134     sq.  ; 

temples  in,  105  ;  commerce  of,  71; 

taxation  in,  440 
'Arafa,  i)rayer  at,  257  n. ;  wocOf  at, 

323 
Ariel,  469 

Aristocracy  and  kingship,  73 
Artemis  Munychia,  288  n. 
Artemis  Orthia,  303  .'-■7. 
Article,  use  of,  in  Hcb.,  119  n. 
Asbama^an  lake,  164 
"l1Vy  =  taboo,  436  sq. 
Asceticism,  in  relation  to  food,  284 
Asclepiades,  290 
Ashera,  or  sacred  pole,  171  sqq. 
Ashes,    lustrations  with,  362 ;   oath 

by,  460 
Ashteroth  Karnaim,  292 
Ass,  sacred,  448  sq. ;  firstling,  444  ; 

head  of,  as  charm,  449 
Assyrian    conquests,    their  infiuence 

on  religion,  36,  65,  77  sq. 
Astarte,  goddess  of  herds  and  flocks, 

336  ;     incorrectly    called    Ashera, 

172   n.  ;    as    Cyprian    Aphrodite, 

451 ;  of  Eryx,  452  ;  her  sacrifices, 

453  ;  various  types  of,  458 
Astral   deities,    as  rain-givers,   100 ; 

worshij)  of,  127  n. 
Asylum,  138  sq. 
'Atdir,  pi.  oi'Atlra,  q.v. 


479 


480 


GENERAL    INDEX. 


Atai-fjatis,  lioni  from  tlie  Euplirates, 
160  ;  cliaiiged  into  a  tisli,  159 ; 
sacred  fish  of,  160  n. 

'Atharl  (Land  of 'Athtar),  97  n. 

'Athtar,  god,  59,  93,  447 ;  god  of 
wells,  97 

'At'ira,  Arabian  sacrifice,  210  nqq. 

Atonement,  function  of,  ascribed  to 
all  sacrifice,  219  ;  with  one's  own 
blood,  319  ;  by  gifts,  328  .s?.,  377 
ftq.  ;  annual,  388  ;  for  murder, 
400  ;  connection  with  idea  of  com- 
munion, 302  ;  dav  of,  in  Levitical 
law,  388  sq.,  395,"  409,  432  ;  Chris- 
tian doctrine  of,  393.     See  Piaeula 

Atoning  sacrifices,  development  of, 
377  sq. 

Baal,  meaning  of  the  word,  92  sqq.  ; 

in  sense  of  husband,   101  ;   house 

or  land  of,  95  s(iq. ;  as  divine  title 

[ba'l)  in  Arabia,   103  aq.  ;   Tanitli 

(with  the)  face  of,  459 
Laal-Berith,  93  n. 
Baal  Hamnian,  92  n. ;  votive  cippi  of, 

191,  457  .S7. 
Baal-Marcod,  93  n. 
Baal-Zebub,  93  n. 
Baalim,  Canaanite,  39  ;  as  life-givers, 

99 
Baaras,  magical  plant,  423 
Babylonians,  diverse  from  other  Sem- 
ites, 8  sq.  ;  of  mixed  blood,  14  sq. 
Biietocfece,  229  n. 
Bsetylia,  193 
Ba'l,  meaning  of  the  term,  95  sq.    See 

Baal 
I'lambyce.     See  Hierapolis 
Ban  {herem),  140  n.,  351,  434 
Banqueting-house,  236 
Banu  Sahra,  feud  with  the  jinn,  121 
15arahiit  in  Hadramaut,  127 
Barim,  charm,  416  n. 
Biithgen,  cited,  43 
Bathing  in   sacred  springs,  153  n., 

168 
Bean  juice,  461 
Beasts,  of  the  jinn,  122;  kindreds  of, 

120 
I'ed,  pilgrim  must  not  slcpp  on,  465 
Beersheba,  165 
Bel,   tal)le  spread  for,    at   Babylon, 

208  ;  human  wife  of,  50 
Belus,  sacred  river,  155,  167 
Berosns,  legend  of  creation  of  men, 

44  ;  of  chaos,  87 
Bethel,  109;  tithe  paid  at,  229  sq.; 

feasts  at,  235  ;  altar  at,  470 
liird,  live,  in  purification,  402,  407 
Birds  sacrificed,  202 


BismiUdJi,  397,  411  n. 

Black-mail,  440 

Blood,  as  food,  216  ;  drinking  of,  295, 
320,  324,  349,  359  ?t.  ;  libations 
of,  214  ;  lustrations  Avith,  326, 
332,  361  ;  offerings  of  one's  own, 
303  ;  sprinkling  of,  319,  325  sq.  ; 
s;mctity  of  kindred,  256,  265  ;  of 
gods,  flows  in  sacred  waters,  159  ; 
of  bulls,  superstitions  about, 
361  71.  ;  of  the  grape,  213  sq.  ; 
covenant,  296  sqq.  ;  jevenge,  33 
sq.,  72,  254,  397  n.,  399  ;  among 
beasts,  120 

Bloodslied,  impurity  of,  408 

Bone,  means  kin,  256 

Booths,  at  Feast  of  Tabernacles,  463 

Boys  wear  long  hair,  311  sq.  ;  as 
executioners,  397  «. 

Buffalo  sacred  with  the  Todas,  281 

Bull's  blood,  superstitions  about, 
361  71. 

Buphonia  at  Athens,  286  sq.,  291 

Burial  of  sacrifices,  351 

Burning,  execution  by,  398  ;  of  the 
dead,  353 

Burning  bush,  176 

Burnt-offering,  a  piacular  sacrifice, 
329  ;  before  a  campaign,  382  sq. 
See  Fire  sacrifices  a7id  Holocaust 

Byblus,  Adonis  -  worship  at,  311; 
sacred  erica  at,  175 

Cahtan,  tribe,  295  sq. 

Cairn,  sacred,  183,  185 

Cais,  meaning  of  word,  154  sq. 

Camels,  sacrificed  by  Arabs,  201,  320  ; 
slaughter  of,  by  Nilus's  Saracens, 
263  ;  flesh  of,  forbidden  to  Chris- 
tian Arabs,  265  ;  sacred  in  Arabia, 
139,  431,  443 

Campaign,  sacrifice  before,  382  sq. 

Canaanites,  were  Semites,  5 

Candlestick  altars,  364 

Cannibalism,  347  sq. 

Caphtor,  12 

Captives,  sacrifice  of,  343,  345  n. 

Carmel,  sanctity  of,  145  sq. 

Carthage,  deities  of,  154  ;  sacrificial 
tarirts  at,  201  sq.  ;  human  sacrifice 
at  344,  354  sq.,  357,  390 

Cattle,  sacred,  278  sqq. 

Cans,  god,  68  «. 

Caves,  sacred,  180  sqq. 

Cedesha  (temjile  -  prostitute),  45  «., 
133 

Cereal  offerings,  wholly  made  over  to 
the  god,  218  sq.,  222  sq. 

Cervaria  ovis,  345 

Chaboras,  sacred  river,  157 


GENERAL   INDEX. 


481 


7 


Cliaiiiis,  thoiif,'s  as,  416  n.  ;  head  of 
victim  as,  '662  ;  (hiii<;  as  a,  302  n.; 
fat  as  a,  363  ;  luicK'an  things  as, 
429 

Chastity,  sacrifice  of,  311 

C'hcniliiiii,  87 

CliiKlien  sacrificed  under  tlie  name 
of  catth',  347  n. 

Clithonic  deities,  181 

Circumcision,  310 

Chin,  not  a  larger  househohl,  260  ; 
sacra  of,  232,  257  ■'"/'/.;  in  Israel, 
258 

Clean  animals,  201 

Clients,  75  .s^.  ;  of  a  god,  77  ■'<(].,  442  ; 
stamped  with  camel  niaik  in  Arabia, 
139 

Colocasium,  healing  plant,  167 

Commensality,  251 

Commerce,  Arabian,  71  ;  and  re- 
ligion, 441 

Communion,  and  atonement,  302  ; 
idea  of,  in  ancient  sacrifice,  377, 
418 

Communities,  structure  of  antique, 
33  s(j(j. 

Coney  [hyrax  Syr.),  425 

Conical  idols,  191 

Contrition,  ritual  expression  of,  412 

Coran,  Sura  vi.  137  exjdained,  102 

Covenant,  by  food,  'Iiylsqr]. ;  by  sacri- 
fice, 300  ;  of  Jehovah  and  Israel, 
300  sq.;  ritual  forms  in,  296,  460 
sqq. 

Cow,  not  eaten  in  Egypt  and  Phoe- 
nicia, 280,  284 

Cow-Astarte,  292 

Cozali,  tire  of,  at  Mozdalifa,  323,  471 

Cuneiform  records,  14  .sv/. 

Cup  of  consolation,  305  ». 

Curse,  as  taboo,  434 

Cynosarges  at  Athens,  274  n. 

Cyprus,  piacular  sacrifice  in,  387,  451 

Daphne,  128  n.,  IdSn.,  158  ;  oracle 

of,  163  ;  sacred  cypresses  at,  163, 

170 
David  and  Jonathan,  317 
Day  of  Atonement,  388  sq.,  395 
Dead,  drink-otferings  to  the,  217 
Death  of  the  gods,  354  sq.,  391  .S7. 
Deborah,  ])alm  of,  179 
Deer  not  sacrificed  by  the  Hebrews, 

201  ;    annual  sacrifice  of,  at  Lao- 

dicea,  390,  447 
De  Ooeje,  Professor,  122  v.,  139  «., 

154  71.,  256 
Deities  change  their  sex,  52 
Delphi,  hair-offering  at,  307  ji. 
Demoniac  plants,  423 


Demons,  how  distinguished  from 
gods,  112  nqq.  ;  men  descended 
from,  50  ;  serpent,  113?j.,  125  xq., 
354  ;  in  springs,  153,  156.  6Ve 
Jinn 

Deuteronomic  tithe,  231 

D/ifif  ninruf,  169,  317 

Di.idem,  why  worn  by  kings,  464 

Dihs,  or  grape  honey,  204 

Dido,  354,  391 

Diipolia  (Buphonia),  286  sq.,  291 

Dionysus,  av^pwroppa'Krryi;,  287;  Semi- 
tic gods  identiticd  with,  176,  241, 
438 

Dog,  sanctity  of,  273  ;  sacrificed 
mystically,  273  ;  Hecate's,  332 

Dogma  wanting  in  ancient  religions, 
18  _ 

Domestic  animals,  sanctity  of, 
266  •s'/'/.,  278  sijq. 

Dove,  foi])id<ien  food,  202  ?/.,  275  ; 
sacred  to  Astarte,  ib.;  at  Mecca, 
208  n.  ;  sacrificed,  202  n.,  275  sqq. 

Dried  flesh,  264,  363 

Duma  (Dumat  al-Jandal),  351 

Duniictha.     See  Duma 

Dung  as  a  charm,  362  v. 

Dusares,  Wine-god,  176,  244  ;  pool 
of,  153,  164 

?:nEN,  garden  of,  98  n.,  289 
Edessa,  sacred  fish  at,  161 
Edom,  god-name,  43 
Effigy,  god  l)urned  in,  353  ;  substi- 
tuted for  victim,  391 
Egypt,  sacred   animals   in,   208  sq., 

283  ;  vegetarianism  in,  283 
Elam  (Susianii),  6 
Elders,  the  council  of,   34  ;  sla}'  the 

sacrifice,  396 
Elijah,  Festival  of,  at  Carmel,  146  n. 
Elolilin,  pi.  in  sing,  sense,  426 
Elusa,  57  n. 

I'phca,  fountain  at  Palmyra,  154 
Epic    poetry,     wanting    among    the 

Senates,  49  .s^. 
Erica,  sacred,  at  Byblus,  175 
Eryx,   sanctuary  of,    275,   287,  291, 

452  ;  sacrifice  to  Astarte  at,  291 
Ethkashslutf,   "make    supjdication," 

303 
Ethrog,  204  n. 
Eticpiette,  sacreil,  147 
Euhemerism,  44,  447 
Euphrates,  sacred  river,  157,  167 
Europa,  292 
Executions,     analogy     to     sacrifice, 

351  w.,  398  sq. 
Exorcism,  407 
Ezruh,  free  tribesman,  75 

II 


482 


GENERAL    INDEX. 


Farles,  origin  of,  119 

Fall,  slory  of  the,  288  .s'^. 

FiUiiily  meal,  260  n</. 

Fara',  (irstliiig,  210  v.,  443 

Fasting,  original  sense,  413 

Fat.  forbidden  food,  220  ;  burning  of 

the,  364  ;  as  a  charm,  363 
Father,  autliority  of,  60 
Fatherhood,     divine,     41    sqq.  ;    in 

heathen  leligions  is  physical  father- 
hood, 42  .s'/'/.,  49  ;  in  the  liible,  42 
Fellowship,      by      eating      together, 

247  .sg. 
Fermenis    excluded   from    the    altar, 

203,  367 
Festivals,  sacrificial,  236  xqq. 
Fetichism,  192 
Fines  in  ancient  law,   329,  378  ;  at 

tlie  sanctuaiy,  329 
Fire  sacrifices,  217  sq.  ;  development 

of,  352  .'iq. ,  365  nq. 
First-born,  holiness  of,  444  sq. 
First-frnits,  222  .sv/g. 
Firstlings,  in  Arabia,  104,  210,  443  .^'g. 
Fish,  sacred,  at  Ascalon,  158  ;  in  the 

Chaboras,  157  ;  at  Hierapolis,  160  ; 

at  Edessa,  161  ;  mystic  sacrifice  of, 

274  ;  forbidden  food,  430 
Fish-skin,   ministrant  clad  in,   274, 

416 
Flesh,    laceration    of,    in    mouniing, 

304;     "living,"    320;    raw,    320, 

324  ;  dried,  363  ;  means  kin,  256  ; 

used  as  food,   205  sq.,  282  ;  when 

first  eaten  by  the  Hebrews,  288  sq.  ; 

of  corpse  as  charm,  305 
Flood  legend  at  Hierapolis,  181,  438 
Fosterage  makes  kinsliip,  257 
Fountains,    sacre!,    153   .tqq.  ;    hair- 

otlering   at,   307  n.      See  Springs, 

Waters 
Frankincense,  sanctity  of,  406,  435 
Fringes  of  garment,  416  n. 
Fruit,  ottered  in  sacrifice,  204  ;   "un- 

circumcised,"    444  ;    juice    of,    in 

ritual,  461 
Fumigation,  406,  436 
Funeral  oistoms,  305,  350 
Fusion  of  religious  communities,  39 

Galu  at  Hierapolis,  303 
Game,  as  food,  205  ;  in  sacrifice,  201 
Garden  of  Eden,  98  ».,  289 
Garments,  covenant  by  exchange  of, 

317  ;  sacred,  416  sq.,  432  sq. 
Gazelle,    sacrifice    of,    202  ;    golden, 

153  ;  sacred,  424,  447 
Genii.     See  Jinn. 
Grrim,  or  clients,  75  w/. 
iJhahijhab,  180  sq.,  211,  321 


Gharcad  tree,  oracle  from,  126,  178 
Gharly  ("bedaubed"  stone),  147  «., 

184 
Ghnl  (Ghoul),  119  n.,  121  «.,  421 
(Ubeonites,  253,  400 
Gilts,  ancient  use  of,  328  ;  as  homage, 

328   sq.  ;  cast   into   sacred   waters, 

161 
Gift  theory  of  sacrifice,  373  sq.  ;  in- 

ade(puicy  of,  365,  375 
Gilgal,  twelve  sacred  stones  at,  194 
Girls,  seilusion  of,  429  n.,  437 
Goat  in  sacrifice,  201,  448,  453 
Go  Is,  how  distinguished  from  demons, 

112  sqq. ;  viewed  as  a  part  of  nature, 

S3  ;  relation  of,  to  w..rshippei-s,  29 

■s^Y.  ;  as  a  part  of  anti(jue  society, 

30  ;  local  relations  of,  91  ;  nature 
ot  the,  24  ;  death  of  the,  354  sg., 
3!^1  w/.  ;  habitation  of  the,  94, 
106  s<i.  ;    congenital    relations   to, 

31  ;  believed  to  fight  for  their 
worshi])pers,  38  ;  fusion  of,  39 

Golden  age,  legend  of,  285 

Greek  influence  on  the  Semites,  12 

Groves  at  sanctuaries,  170 

Habitation  of  the  gods,  94,  106  sq. 

Hadi-amaut,  werewolves  in,  86  ;  trial 
of  witches  in,  163 

Hair,  as  relic,  307  n.  ;  cut  off  in 
mourning,  305  .sg.  ;  superstitions 
connected  with,  306  n.  ;  offering 
of,  307  w/.  ;  offering  of,  in  Penta- 
teuch, 314  ;  taboos  on,  464 

Haldc,  epithet  of  death,  306  n. 

Hallel,  321,  411 

Hanash,  creeping  things,  121,  275 

Hands  laid  on  head  of  victim,  335, 
401  sq. 

Hanging,  execution  by,  351 

Hannibal,  oath  of,  154 

Harb  b.  Omavya,  slain  by  the  Jinn, 

'  125 

Harranians,  sacrifices  of,  272  .sgg  ,  to 
Saturn,  355,  see  Syrians  ;  alleged 
luiman  sacrifices  among,  348  n.  ; 
facts  of,  413  ;  mysteries  of,  425 

Hasan  and  Hosain,  303 

Haunts  of  the  jinn,  123 

Hayy,  "tribe,"  meaning  of  the 
word,  256  n. 

Head  of  the  victim,  not  eaten,  359  ; 
used  as  charm,  362,  449,  456 

Healing  sj)rings,  153,  167 

Heliopolis  (Baalbek),  156,  425 

Hera  Acriva,  287,  391 

Heracles,  as  huntsman,  273  ;  at 
Tarsus,  353  ;  and  the  Hydra,  167  ; 
Tyriau,  see  Melcarth 


GENERAL    INDEX. 


483 


Hertm  (ban),  140  ».,  351,  434 
Hiuiiiaiiliniilitiis,  4.')!t 
llcrmoii,  Mount,  145,  4'27 
Ilierapolis,  157,160,  303,  351  w.,  417  ; 

I)iltjiiiiiaf,'e  to,  80  ;  ritual  of,  "201, 

455 
Hi^h  places,  171,  470  xq. 
Hi  111(1,    or   saiMTil   tract,    in    Arabia, 

134  .s'/.,  145  tiq(j. 
Hinnoui,  valley  of,  353 
Hittites,  11  sq. 
Holiness,  of  the  goils,   133  ;   of  the 

sanctuary,  134  ;  of  animals,  371  ; 

relations  of,   to  tlie    idea   of   jiro- 

jjcrty,  134  .s^.,  371  --^q.  ;  rules  of, 

141   xqq.  ;  Semitic  roots  denoting, 

140  ;  relation  to  uncleanness,  405, 

427  ;  to  taboo,  142,  i'SO  sqq.  ;  con- 
tagious,    431     sqq.  ;     congenital, 

444  w/. 
Holocaust,   origin   of,    352  ;    rare   in 

ancient  time^,  219  .sv/. 
Holy,    meaning    of    the    word,    90, 

132  sqq. 
Holy  i)laces,  90  ftqq. ;  caves,  180  .sY/7.  ; 

stones,  186  fqq.  ;  trees,  169  aqq.  ; 

older  than  temi)les.  111 
Homeric  poems,  religious  importance 

of,  32 
Horns,  sacred  community  of  Mecca, 
■  432 
Honey,    excluded   from    altar,    204  ; 

in  Greek  sacritiee,  203  71. 
Horeb,  Mount,  136,  145 
Horns  of  tlie  altar,  415 
Horse  sacriliced  to  the;  sun,  275 
Hospitality,  law  of,  76  ;  in  Arabia, 

252  ;  at  sacrificial  feasts,  236,  247, 

266  ;  not  a  gift,  439 
House  of  liaal,  95 
Household  gods,  191,  442 
House-tops,  worship  on,  214 
Human    blood,    superstitions   about, 

349,  397  n. 
Hiunau   sacrifice,    343   x'/r/.  ;    in   the 

Roman  Empire,  347  n. 
Hvirna,  superstitions  about,  122  11., 

'l26  71. 
Hydrophobia,  349 

I  UN  ToFAiL,  grave  of,  146 

Iilkli'ir.     Ste  Lemon-grass 

Idids,  not  necessarily  simulacra, 
190  ;  origin  of  authrojioniorphic, 
194  ;  in  animal  form,  291  ;  in 
form  of  cone,  191  ;  of  paste  in 
Arabia,  208  n. 

IhrCnH,  315,  465 

Jjaza,  323 

llul,  place,  324  n. 


Imposition  of  IkukIs,  ;j35,  401  xq. 

Impurity,  148,  407,  428.  See,  Un- 
cleanness 

Imraulcais  at  TabfUa,  47  «. 

Incense,  used  in  purification,  406  ; 
tithes  of,  229 

Infanticide,  351  v.,  388,  397  h. 

Initial  ion  ceremonies,  309  ;  mystical, 
339  sij. 

Iphigenia,  sacrifice  of,  383 

Isaac,  sacrifice  of,  291  ;  blessing  of, 
448 

Ishtai',  mother  goddess,  56 

/x/din,  meaning  of,  SO  11. 

Izduliar,  50 

Jaciiix  and  Boaz,  191,  358  .tq.,  468 

J<h-  alluh,  77 

.lealousy,  of  the  deity,  147  ;  water  of, 
164 

Jehovah,  ])ro[)h(!tic  conce))tion  of 
sovereignty  of,  66,  75,  81  ;  abso- 
lute justice  of,  74 

Jephthah's  daughter,  395 

Jewels,  use  of,  433  sq. 

Jinn  (Arabian  demons),  113  sqq.  ; 
havi!  no  individuality,  119  ;  akin 
to  wild  lieasts,  120  .S77.  ;  at  feud 
with  men,  121  ;  haunts  of,  123  ; 
of  healing  springs,  153  ;  trans- 
formations of,  421 

Joppa.  sacred  fountain  at,  159 

Julian,  272,  351  »/. 

Justice  of  the  gods,  62 

Kadesh,  fountain  of,  judgment  at, 
165,  193  n. 

nna  ma,  46i 

Khalasa,  ])lace,  57  n. 

Khalasa  (Kholasa),  deity,  208  ». 

A7»or.s  (Ll'C'in),  473 

Kid  in  mother's  milk,  204  n. 

Kidney  fat,  360  s<m. 

Kin,  the  oldest  circle  of  moral  obliga- 
tion, 254  ;  how  conceived,  2ii5 

Kindreds  of  be.ists,  120 

Kingship,  origin  of,  34  sq.  ;  charac- 
ter ol  Semitic,  63  ;  as  a  social 
force,  73  ;  not  feudal,  91  ;  divine, 
66  sqq. 

Kings,  l)lood  of,  superstition  about, 
349;  killed  by  bleeding,  349  «., 
397  ??. 

Kinship,  of  gods,  men  and  animals, 
269  ;  of  gods  and  men  witli  natural 
things,  275  ;  may  be  acquired,  255 

Kuliofi,  417,  454  sq. 

Kolaib-Wail,  137  «.,  146 

Lacekation  of  llesh  in  mourning,  304 


484 


GENERAL    INDEX. 


Lamb,  Charles,  sotirce  of  the  sucking 

pig  story,  290 
Land,  property  in,  94  ;   of  the  gods, 

91  ,sr/. 
Language,  how  far  a  criterion  of  race, 

6  sqq. 
Laodicea  ad  Mare,  390  s(j.,  447 
LapiH  pertusufi  at  Jerusalem,  214 
Lat  (A1-),  worshipped  by  the  Naba- 

tiieans,    56  ;    in   Herodotus,     298 ; 

stone  of,  at  Tfiif,  192  n.  ;  image  of, 

at  Tabala,  194 
Leaven,  excluded  from  altar,  203 
Leavened    bread,    otfered    on    altar, 

203  n.,  224 
Lectisternia,  207  sq. 
Lemon-grass  at  Mecca,  134  n. 
Leoutes,  river,  155  nq. 
Leper,  cleansing  of,  402,  428 
Leucadian  promontory,  355  n.,  397  n. 
Leviathan,  161 
Levitical    ritual,    characterised,    198 

!^qq. 

Libations,  213  sqq. 

Libyans  of  Herodotus,  410,  416 

Lion,  divine  symbol,  156,  425 

Lion-god  in  Arabia,  209 

Lishka  (xy^,^),  236  n. 

Live  bird  in  lustrations,  402 

Living  iiesh,  320 

Living  water,  127 

Lizards,  metamorphosed  men,  86 

Local  god,  kinsliip  with,  116 

Long-suttering  of  the  gods,  62 

liucifer,  57,  151  n.,  265 

Lud  (Lydia),  6 

Luperci,  459 

Lustrations,   Avith  blood,   326,   332 ; 

with  ashes,  362  ;  sacrificial,  406 
Lydus,  De  Mens.  iv.  45,  emended,  455 

AIabbog.     See.  Hierapolis 
Madhbah  in  sense  of  trench,  322  )). 
Magical  superstitions,  why  forbidden, 

246 ;  rest  on  savage  views  of  nature, 

427 
Make-believe  in  ancient  religion,  344 

sq. 
Male  victims  preferred,  280  7i. 
Males,  holy  food  eaten  only  by,  181  n. 
Mamre,    sanctuary   of,    109  ;    sacred 

well  at,  162,  166  n.  ;  feast  at,  433, 

435 
Mandhil,  sacreel  trees,  169 
^landrake,  423 
I^Ianslaughter,  399 
Marna,  god,  68  n. 
J^Iasai,  216,  351,  413 
J\lasks,  417 
Masstba,  sacred  stone,  186,  437  sq. 


Meal-offering  in  Arabia,  206,  208 
Mecca,    harain    of,    134,    136,    147  ; 

well  Zainzam    at,   153  ;    idols   at, 

208    n. ;    sacred    circuit    at,    432  ; 

character  of  the  cult  at,  105  n. 
Megaron  in  Greek  temples,  183 
Melcarth,     67;     at    Tyre,    190;    at 

Daphne,  163,  170,  175  ;  tithes  paid 

to,    228  ;    annual   resurrection   of, 

449  sq. 
Menstruation,  impurity  of,  428  sq. 
Meribali,  or  Kailesli,  165 
Mesha,  king  of  Moab,  38,  61  ;  sacri- 
fices his  son,  356  ;  dedicates  part 

of  spoil  to  Ohemosh,  441 
Metamorphosis,  myths  of,  86  sq. 
Mexican  sacrifices,  344,  347,  391 
Midriff,  a  seat  of  life  and  feeling,  360 
MihCtsh,  460 

Milha,  or  bond  of  salt,  252 
Milk,  main  diet  of  pastoral  nomads, 

205  ;    in  sacrifice,   203,   208,   439  ; 

not  sold   in  Arabia,    439  ;    makes 

kinship,  257,  336 
Mimosa  thought  to  be  animate,  125 
Minha,  cereal  tribute,  200,  207,  218, 

222  ;  drawn  Irom  first-fruits,  222 
Mohammed,   compared  with  Moses, 

70 
Moharric,  Arabian  god,  345  n. 
M()loch-worslii[i,  351  sq.,  375 
Monotheism,     alleged     tendency    of 

Semites  towards,  74 
Monsters  in  Semitic  art,  87 
Morality   and   antique   religion,    53, 

248  sq. 
Morassa'a,  charm,  416  n. 
Morning  star,  worship  of,  151  n.,  264 
Mo'sir,    girl    under   confinement    at 

age  of  puberty,  429  n.,  437 
Motherhood  of  deities,  52,  56  sqq. 
Mot'im  al-tair,  god,  208  n. 
^lourning,  at  piacular  rites,  409  sq.  ; 

laceration  of  flesh  in,  30,  304 
Mouse,  sacred  victim,  275 
Mozdabfa,  323,  471 
Murder,  399 

Myrtle,  in  lustration,  456 
Mystery,  Christianity  why  so  desig- 
nated, 80  n. 
Mystical  cults,  339  sq. 
^Mystic  sacrifices,  272,  325,  337  sqq., 

379 
Myth,  place  of,  in  ancient  religion, 

18  sqq.  ;  derived  from  ritual,  19  ; 

value  of,  in  the  study  of  ancient 

faiths,  21 
Mythology,  Semitic,  why  scanty,  49 

Nabat^an  Dionysus  (Dusares),  176 


GENERAL    INDEX. 


485 


Naci'a,  sacrifice  called,  471  '«iq. 

Naked  svoislii]iiieis  at  Mecca,  432 

Naklda,  SMcretl  acacia  at,  169 

Ndr-al-hfda,  460 

103,  '^13 

Niisr,  A' iilture-god,  209 

Nationality  and  religion,  36  xq.,  73 

Nature  of  things  not  discriminated 

by  caily  man,  84 
Nazaritc,  314,  463 
Nilus,  -263,  320,  342,  343,  etc. 
Niinrod,  91  n. 

Nisan,  sacred  month,  387,  451 
Nisibis,  named    from   sacred  stones, 

187  n. 
Nomads,  food  of,  '205 
No>ib,  sacred  stone,  184 

Oath  of  purgation,  164  i^qq.,  460 

Obelislvsas  idols,  191 

( icaisir,  Arabian  god,  206,  208 

Oil,  in  sacrifice,  203  ;  sacred  fountain 

of,  164 
'Okiiz,  sanctuary  of,  193  ;  fair  of,  441 

'OXoXvyr,,  410  Hq. 

Oinbos  and  Tentyra,  feuds  of,  33 

<Jmens  from  animals,  424 

Oracles,  from  trees,  120,  178  xq.  ;   at 

wells,  162  .s-7. 
Ordeals  by  water,  163  s<iq. 
Orestes,  341 
Orgiastic  element  in  ancient  religion, 

243  nqq. 
Orgies  of  the  Arabian  Venus,  344  n. 
Orontes,    legend   of  the   river,    156, 

161 
Orotal,  298,  307,  312 
Orwa,  holy  well  of,  153 
Otaheite  (Tahiti \  305,  431,  465 
Outlaw,  purification  of,  340  nq. 
Ox,  in  sacrifice,  201  ;  sacredness  of, 

280  ;  in  Greece,  286  sqq. 

r.M.MKTUM,  153 

Talni  -  tree    worshipped    at    Nejran, 

169 
Palmyra,  sacreil  fountain  at,  154 
Paneas,  156,  167 
Tau-Hellenic  ideas,  32 
I'antheou,  Semitic,  40 
Parental  authority,  59  .svy. 
Parricide,  398 
Particularism     of     ancient     Semitic 

religion,  36  sqq.,  54 
Passover,  204,  326,  387  ;  as  sacrifice 

of    firstlings,    445    S'y.  ;     AraV)ian 

equivalent  of,  210  n. 
Pastoral  peoples  regard  their  herds  as 

sacred,  278  sqq. 


Pastoral  religion,  336 

Pasture  land,  tax  on,  228  n. 

Patron,  god  conceived  as,  79 

Pegasus,  275 

Pentateuch,  composition  of,  198  n. 

Perfume,  in  worship,  433 

Periander  and  Melissa,  218 

Petra,    mother   and  sou   worshipped 

at,  57 
Phallic  symbols,  194,  437  .sr/. 
Philistines,  origin  of,  12 
Philo    15yblius,    cosmogony   of,    44 ; 

cited,  169,  179  n.,   186,  290,  292, 

313,  448 
Phienicia,  tithes  in,  228  .^g. 
Phieuicians,  hair-oil'eriiigs  of,  311 
Piacula,  209,  378  ;  annual,  385  i^qq.  ; 

Greek,   332;    Levitical,   326,    330, 

402  ;  mystic,  379  ;  Koman,  332  ;  at 

opening  of  campaign,  382  .s^/. 
Piacular  rites,  distinetive  characters 

of,  379  .SY/.  ;  interpretation  of,  380  ; 

antique  features  in,  how  preserved, 

381  sqq.  ;  not  originally  sin-otter- 

ings,  382 
Pilgrimage,  SO  ;  in  Arabia,  102  sqq. ; 

not  a  bond  of  religious  union,  259  ; 

hair-ollering    in  connection    with, 

313,    464  .sv/.  ;  ascetic  observances 

in,  465  ;  dress  worn  in,  466 
Pillar  altar,  188 
Pillar,  sacred,  183  577. 
Pillars,    twin,    as   symbols,    438  ;   of 

Hercules,  190,  194 
Pit  under  an  altar,  321 
Pole,  sacred,  171  sqq. 
Polyandry,  of  goddesses,  58  sq. 
Precedent,    the   rule   of    ritual,    22, 

110 
Precipice,     captives     thrown    from, 

398  n. 
Priesthoods,  hereditary,  48,  79 
Priests,    eat    sin-ofi'ering,    331    .•••7.  ; 

slay  victim,  396 
Proper  names,  theophorous,    43,    45 

87.,  67  *'7.,  79,  100  .sv/. 
Projierty,  in  land,  94  ;  in  water,  99  ; 

notion  of,  introduced  into  religion, 

376 
Prophets  of  the  Ashera,  172  n. 
Providence    of    the    gods,    64  ;    not 

]iersonal  in  heathenism,  246 
Public  parks,  137 
Purification,  by  sacrifice,  404  sq. ;  by 

bathing,  153  ;;.,  168,  332,  406 
Pyre-festival  at  nierapolis,  351,  355, 

358,  387,  397,  451 

Qi-Aii,,  sacrifice  of,  202,  449 
Queen  of  heaven,  172 


486 


GENERAL    INDEX. 


]?AiiRATH,  divine  title,  68 

Ka<^-ott'eiiiigs,  317 

Kain-ffivers,  astral  deities  as,  100 

llajab,  sacrificial  month,  210,  387, 
442,  446 

Rani's  head  as  charm,  456 

Raw  flesh,  320,  324 

Rechahites,  465 

lied  heifer,  333,  335,  357 

Regions,  holy.  111,  134,  145,  150  sqq. 

Regulative  inllnence  of  religion, 
248  sqq. 

Itelics  worn  as  charms,  318 

lieligion,  j)ositive  and  traditional, 
1  sq.  ;  hereditary,  30,  38  ;  relation 
between  Hebrew  and  Canaanite,  4  ; 
development  of,  in  East  and  West, 
contrasted,  35  sq.  ;  oldest  form  is 
religion  of  kinship,  51  sqq. 

Religion,  ancient,  a  part  of  public 
life,  22,  29  ;  ethical  value  of,  53, 
248  sq.  ;  make-believe  in,  344  sq.  ; 
materialistic  but  not  selfish,  245  ; 
offers  no  consolation  to  private 
suffering,  241  ;  habitually  cheerful, 
237  ;  and  public  spirit,  249 

Religious  and  political  institutions, 
analogy  of,  22  ;  beliefs,  persistency 
of,  330  ;  restrictions,  moral  value 
of,  144  ;  communities,  structure 
of,  29  sqq.,  258  sq.  ;  fusion  of,  39 

Rhabdomancy,  179  n. 

Righteousness,  divine,  408 

Ritual,  place  of,  in  early  religion,  18 

Rivers,  sacred,  145,  158  .sq.  ;  of 
Pluenicia,  155,  159;  of  Syria,  156 

Rohh,  fruit  juice,  461 

Robe  of  rigliteousness,  417 

Rocks  in  situ,  worshipped,  192 

Royal  houses,  sprung  from  gods,  45 

Rules  of  holiness,  141  sqq. 

Sacra  gentilicia,  257 
Sacred  regions.  111,  134  sqq. 
Sacrifice,  196  sqq.  ;  meaning  of  the 
word,  197 ;  svnonymous  with 
slaughter,  223  ; '^by  fire.  107,  217 
sqq.,  352  ;  is  the  tyi)ical  form  of 
ancient  worship,  197  ;  material  of, 
201  ;  milk  in,  203  ;  oil  in,  203  ; 
salt  in,  252  ;  animal,  205  sqq.  ; 
human,  343  sqq.,  347  «.,  344, 
354  sq.,  356,  357,  390  ;  of  tribes- 
men, 343  ;  of  captives,  343,  472  ; 
of  ciiildreii,  445  ;  under  name  of 
cattle,  347  w.  ;  of  new-born  victims, 
349  «.,  388,  443  ;  of  firstlings,  445  ; 
how  eaten,  221  ;  ])rimitive  Arabian, 
320  ;  charms  derived  from,  361  sq.  ; 
gift  theory  of,  273  sq.,  365,  375, 


442  ;  is  communion,  442  ;  is 
originally  a  communal  act,  2'3Qsqq., 
257  sqq.  ;  godward  and  manward 
parts  of,  320  .^qq.  ;  stated  occasions 
of,  384  sq.,  473 

Sacrifices  are  the  food  of  the  gods, 
207  ;  simply  laid  on  holy  ground, 
20S  sqq.  ;  buried,  107,  351  ;  thrown 
into  water,  107,  359  ;  species 
of,  in  Leviticus,  199  sq.  ;  species 
of,  at  Carthage,  219  n.  ;  mystic, 
272,  325,  337  sqq.  ;  killed  witli- 
out  efiusion  of  blood,  325  «.,  397  ; 
piacular,  332 ;  atoning,  develop- 
ment of,  377  sqq. 

Sacrificial  feast,  involves  slaughter, 
224  ;  social  character  of,  236,  253, 
263  ;  view  of  life  underlying,  239  ; 
ethical  significance  of,  247,  253  ; 
older  than  family  meal,  262 

Sacrosanct  victim,  in  Greece,  286  sq. 

Sa/uyd,  440 

Salm  in  theophorous  names,  79 

Saliiiaii,  worship  of  Aloharric  at, 
345  n. 

Salt,  in  sacrifice,  203  ;  liond  of,  252  ; 
strewing  of  ground  with,  435  v. 

Samora  (acacia),  magic  use  of  gum  of 
the,  126,  406' 

Sanbulos,  huntsman  Baal  of,  50  n. 

Sanctuaries,  how  constituted,  107 
sq.,  188,  415  ;  physical  characters 
of,  128,  145  ;  in  Arabia,  134  sqq. 

Sanctuary,  taboos  afiecting,  124  ; 
Isaiah's  conception  of  the,  110 

Saturn,  Carthaginian, 355  ;  Harranian, 
sacrifice  to,  355 

Satyrs  (.se'f>'fm)  in  0.  T.,  113 

Scapegoat,  397,  401  ;  analogit  s  to,  402 

Scriptures,  the,  defile  the  hands,  405 

St' 'trim,  113 

Selli,  at  Dodona,  465 

Seiniiamis,  351,  355 

Semitic  peo[)les  enumerated,  1  ; 
origin  of  the  name,  5  ;  geographical 
dispersion,  11  ;  original  home,  11  ; 
homogeneity  and  constancy  of 
type,  13  sq.  ;  alleged  tendency  of, 
to  nioiiotheism,  74 

Semitic  sjieech,  9  sq. 

Serpent  in  Gen.  iii.,  423  sq. 

Serpent-demons,  113  n.,  125  .tq., 
354,  421  .S7.  ;  in  springs,  153,  157 

Servant  {'ahd,  'thed),  use  of  the 
woid,  68  sq<i. 

Set  (Typhon),  449 

Seven  wells,  sanctity  of,  165  sq. 

Sex  of  victim,  280,  453 

Shaving  the  head,  a  sacrificial  act, 
306  sq. 


GENERAL    INDEX. 


487 


Sliec'lu'iii,  (ir.unilar  tree  at,  17!) 
Shccj),  jnacular  saciiticc,  450  sq. 
Slieep-Astartc,  2!tl,  457  «'/. 
Slieeji-skin    worn    by   sacrilieeis    ni 

Cvpnis,  417,  454  sq. 
SliPikh  Adi,  valk'y  of,  164 
Sh  laiuJm   (sing,  shelein)  exiilaiufd, 

•219 
Slipwbreail,  207  «/. 
Shoes,  put  oil'  on  holy  ground,  434 
iSicdli,  306  )i. 
Sieharbas  {h]!2  "131^,  ^-'i 
Sin,  notion  of,  foreign  to  the  oldest 

worships,  382 
Sin-oflering,  190  ;  why  not  tasted  by 
the  laity,  330;  viewed  as  an  execii- 
tion,   403  ;  Hebrew,   326,   330  .s-/.  ; 
sacrosanct,  332,  431 
Sinai,  sanctity  of,  110  .sv/. 
Sinew  that  shrank,  360 
Skin  of  saerilice,  414  sqq.,  448  ;  as 

sacred  dress,  416  sq. 
Slausihter,  private,  torbiddcn,  263  ; 
of  victim,  by  whom  performed, 
396  ;  reijuircs  consent  of  clan,  266  ; 
originallv  identical  with  sacritice, 
223 
Slaves  sleep  beside  the  blood  and  the 

dung,  217  n. 
Sleyb,"hunting  tribe,  206 
Societv,      religious,      in      antiquity, 

29  .S77. 
Solidarity  of  gods  and  their  worship- 
pers, 33 
Solwilv,  305  H.,  414 
Sons  of  (Jod  {Bne  Elohim),  426 
Soul  and  body,  85 

Sovereignty   of    Jehovah,    ]irophetic 
conception  of,  66,  75,  81,  152  sf/r/. 
Spoils  of  war,  how  divided,  440 
Springs,  sacred,  127  .^•7.  ;  bathing  in, 

153  «.,  168.     Sec,  Waters 
Sprinkling  of  blood,  319,  325  .sr/. 
Stag  sacrifice  at   Laodicea,   390  xq., 

447 
Stars,  thou<;ht  to  live,  127 
Stigmata,  316 

Stimulative  influence  of  religion,  249 
Stone,  sacred,  as  svmbol  of  deity,  189 

sqq.  ;  daubed  with  blood,  184,  188  ; 

stroked  with    the   hand,    80,   188, 

215;    at    liethel,    187;    anointed, 

214  ;  in  rineni' ia,  186 
Strangers,  jirotected,  75  -s-^. 
Strangling,  of  victim,  325  ;  execution 

by,  398 
Stroking,  galutiition  by,  80,  188,  215, 
442 
'       Stygian  waters,  154,  164 


Subjugation  of  nature  by  man,  115 
Substitution    of  animals    for   human 

victims,  346  ;  <loctrine  of,  402  s<iq. 
Swine,  holy  or  unclean,  1 13,  129  ;  lor- 

bidden  food  to  all  Semites,  201 


sq. 


;  as 
pia- 


lihallii 


nivstic  sacrifices,  272 
cula,  332,  457 

Swine-god  (Adonis),  392  n. 

Symbols,   divine,   151   sqq 
194,  437 

Syni-retism  of  later  Semitic  heathen- 
ism, 16,  452 

Syrians,  hair-olTerings  of,  307,  311  ; 
sacrifices  of  later,  272,  275,  321 ,  355; 
magic  of,  423  sq. 


17     n.  ;    sacred 


TAAiuiATA  Sharran,  121 
Tabala,     oracle    at,     47 

gazelles  at,  447 
Talde  of  the  gods,  184 
Taboo  explaineii,  142  sq.;  relation  of, 
to  holiness,   427  s'lq.;  removed  by 
washing,    432  ;     on    sexual    intei- 
course,  435  sqq.,  462 
Taboos  affecting  the  sanctuary,  124, 

148 
Ta'iiti.    See  Otaheite 
TahUl,  321,  411 

Taim,  in  t.heo{)horous  names,  80 
Tanunuz,  his  bones  pounded,  326  11. 

See  Adonis 
Tanith  (Artemis,    Dido^,   56;    pillars 
of,    191,   437,    457    ^7.  ;    with    the 
i'ace  of  Baal,  459 
Tarsus,  annual  festival  at,  353,  357 
Tattooing,  316 
TawCif,  321 

taxation,  ancient,  227,  440  .s'7. 
Teni])le,  at  Jerusalem,  228  ;  worship 
of  second,   198  sq.;  altars  of,  359, 
466  sqq. 
Temples,  in  Arabia,  105:  above  towns, 
157  ;  treasures  at,  137  ;  rock-hewn, 
180 
Tenedos,  sacrifice  to  Dionysus  at,  287 
Terebinth,  feast  and  fair  of  the,  162  ; 
at  Mamre,  burns  and    is  not  con- 
sumed, 176 
Theanthropic  victim,  391,  395 
Tlieodulus,  son  of  Nilus,  342  sqq. 
Theophany,  108,  112,  415 
Theophorous   iiroper   names,    43,    45 

.S7.,  67  A'7  ,  79  .■*7.,  100  sq. 
Therapeutie,  284  n. 
Thorayya,  wells  called,  153  w.,  166  n. 
Tiberias,  seven  wells  at,  166  n. 
Tithes,  227  sq.  ;  in  Arabia,  229  ;  at 
Hethcl,  230  ;  in  Deuteronomy,  231  ; 
in   Levitical  law,  233  ;  how  spent, 
234  sq.;  of  booty,  440  .s^. 


488 


GENEEAL    INDEX. 


ToJas,  their  sacred  buffaloes,  281 

Tonsure,    Arabian,    307  ;    of    Greek 
epliebi,  ih.,  n. 

Tojjliet,    353 ;    etj'mology   of    word, 
,  357 

Totem  mysteries,  276  sq. 

Totemisni,  117  .sy/.  ;  Semitic,  130, 
424  ;  decline  of,  3:36 

Totems,  fed  as  an  act  of  worship, 
208  .s-7. 

Traditional  religion,  1  sq. ;  an  affair 
of  race,  5 

Transcendency  of  the  godhead,  49  ; 
not  a  primitive  idea,  89,  177 

Transformation  myths,  86  sq. 

Treasures  at  temples,  137 

Trees,  viewed  as  animate  or  de- 
moniac, 125  ;  sacred  worshij)  of,  in 
Syria,  169  ;  oracles  from,  169, 
178  sq.;  deities  transformed  into, 
174  ;  are  of  all  species,  175  ;  how 
worshipped,  178 

Trespass  offering,  199 

Tribal  religion  in  Arabia,  46  Sf/. 

Tribesmen,  sacrifice  of,  343 

Tiibute,  sacred,  99,  227  ;  in  Arabia, 
102,  438  sqq. ;  on  commerce,  441 

Troezen,  sacred  laurel  at,  332  ;  Apollo 
of,  341 

Troglodytes,  described  by  Agathar- 
chides,  278 

Tv]>hoeus,  127 
Typhon  (Set),  449 

Unclean  land  means  a  foreign  land, 

92 
Unclean  things  in  magic,  429 
Uncleanness,    405,     427   sqq. ;    rules 

of,  143  ;  infectious,  428.     See  Im- 

l)urity 
Unction,  unguents,  ritual  of,  214  sq., 

363  sq. 
Usous,  Phoenician  god,  186  ;  relation 

to  Esau,  448 
Uz,  the  same  as  'And  ?  43  n. 

Vecjktable  offerings,  202  sqq. 
Vegetarianism,  primitive,  282,  285  ; 

Philo  Byblius  on,  290 
Venus,  Arabian,  orgies  of,  344  n. 
Vermin,  sacrifice   of,    275  ;   worship 

of,  338 
Vestments,  priestly,  433 


Victim,  by  whom  slain,  396  ;  effigy 
substituted  for,  391  ;  head  of,  not 
eaten,  359  ;  used  as  charm,  362  ; 
offers  itself  spontaneously,  291  ; 
thcanthropic,  391,  395  ;  cast  from 
a  jH'ecipice,  351,  355,  397  ;  new- 
born, sacrifice  of,  349  n.,  388,  443  ; 
cut  in  twain,  460  sq. 

View  of  life  underlying  antique 
religion,  239  .^qq. 

Virgin  mother,  56  sq. 

Volcanoes,  superstitions  al)out,  127 

Votive  offerings,  197,  440  .sy/. 

Vows,  314  ;  taboos  incident  to,   462 

sqq. 

Vulture-god  in  Arabia,  209 

AVARiiior.s,  consecrated,  148,  383  ; 
taboos  on,  148,  436,  462  sq. 

Washing  of  garments,  433 

Water,  living,  127  ;  ordeals  by,  163 
sqq.;  pro])erty  in,  99  ;  poured  into 
sacred  well,  182  ;  as  libation,  213  ; 
in  lustration,  349,  407  sq. 

Waters,  healing,  in  Ezekiel,  167  ; 
sacred,  128,  154  ;  discoloured  at 
certain  seasons,  159,  182 ;  blood 
of  gods  in,  159  ;  gifts  cast  into, 
161  ;  Stygian,  154,  164 

Waterspout  personified,  161  n. 

Wells,  sacred,  152  ;  ritual  of,  162  sq. 

Were-wolf,  347  n.  ;  in  Hadramaut, 
86 

Widow,  secluded  as  impure,  429  n. ; 
purification  of,  in  Arabia,  402  n., 
407  n.,  428 

Wild  beasts,  dread  of,  115,  124 

Wine,  libations  of,  203,  213  .vg. ;  re- 
ligious abstinence  from,  465 

Witches,  trial  by  water,  163 

WocAlf,  322  sg. 

Wolf  Apollo  at  Sicyon,  209 

Women,  may  not  eat  the  holiest 
things,  281 ;  do  not  eat  with  men, 
261 

Yaghuth  (Lion-god),  38,  209 
Yeaning  time,  388,  446 

Zamzam,  holy  well,  153 

Zihah,  zehahlm.  meaning  of  the  word, 

219  ;  at  Carthage,   includes  cereal 

offerings,  205 


MORRISON    AND   GIBB,    PRINTERS,    EDINliURGH. 


•o  *■ 


